The future of cities
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There have been plenty of discussions recently on the future of cities and their tech trees.
On one hand, you can't remove tech trees. They specialize a city, which creates treading opportunities between different cities, and also gives value to ranking up the city, which in turns creates a need for food and consequently opportunities for conflicts between cities (on Syndesia).
At the same time, we are getting close to the Steam Early access, and we can't ask for significant changes. Probably anything that isn't just a numerical change will not get to pass.
Let's analyze what we have, and look at what is and isn't working:
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The last system of tech trees allows a city to craft advanced crafting items, and also improves their quality. This solution kind of works, but it also creates a double gate for advanced crafting, since you need both the recipe and a city with the related technology. For solo players this can be an issue. It also creates an issue where the biggest city has the biggest pull factor toward new residents, so all players tend to go to the same few cities.
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In the last tests, the tech trees have been disabled and everyone could craft everything everywhere. This obviously had a specific reason to be, due to the nature of those tests, but it has also shown that this system isn't all bad. The obvious issue was that there was no reason to invest in a city (which requires a huge amount of resources).
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In the older version of cities, only the citizens of the city got to get something out of the city, and only them could harvest the resources of the region. Now, this created a very intensive trading between cities, but clearly most players felt left out of a big portion of the game.
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In none of the previous incarnations, there was an actual shortage of food, so no drive to raid other cities apart from getting into a fight for fun purposes.
This is the info on the results that we got from the tests so far.
What does this lead us to? I don't have a clear answer to this, but I got a potential proposal which with only minor changes could give us a system which learns from past lessons. The aim is always to have lots of trades, lots of fights and be as less impactful as possible on those players which don't want to interact with cities.
The tech tree
Don't have any gating on production given by the tech tree. Everyone can craft anything in their homes (as long as they have the recipe). Instead focus the tech tree on enchanting and resources. The tech tree allows players to use the enchanting table to increase the items to +1/+2/+3/+4 and part of the gold spent is sent to the city coffers. Players which want to craft those kind of items will find it easier to be near a town which has said tech, but will still feel a lot less restricted. The techs must be purchased for each single item you want to enchant, and the t2 version requires the tech in the t1 one.
Edit: Added an example image to make it more clear. These are leather armor, rogue armor and ranger armor. Each of these steps should cost 1 point.
In addition, the tech tree should focus on the resource part, which is normally what really characterizes a city. The size of the tree should be massive. With each resource having a specific tech i.e. bronze, mammoth hide, blazium oil. These techs unlock another craft to get those materials, which has slightly better returns, for example "Bulk Arboreal Dragon Leather" instead of tanning skins to leather in ratio of 5:5 in increments of 5, it instead works in increments of 10 and with a 10:11 ratio. Ingots could go from the 3+fuel : 2 to 15+5xfuel : 11. Oils from 2:5 to 4:11. These are simply additional crafts to make. Same items involved, probably same icon with just a "B" symbol on it. And it doesn't make any sense for a city to develop a tech which is not relevant in its location, so they will specialize. Going to the territory of another city to haul back minerals will yeld less final resources than a resident of that location doing it, so you are more likely to purchase them from that city. These techs should cost 2 points.
Edit: This is how the fabric part could look like.
With that said, how many points should a city get? Depends on the planet. Syndesia cities should get more points than Arboreus ones. The reason for that is that further down you will read that I'm proposing for Arboreus to produce more food, so Arboreus will have more city of high rank compared to Syndesia. Arboreus cities should get one point per Rank, so a max rank city gets to bulk produce 3 resources and enchant a t2 set and its t1 version to +4. A Syndesian city should get double that. Keeping together a city with scarcity of food and constant pvp threat should be rewarding.
City Progress
Let's not reinvent the wheel. The cities should follow the current 15 rank system based on prestige and food requirements that they currently have.
Where instead there is a need to act is on the available quantity of food. Syndesia should feel properly starved, so that people contend with each other for food. Arboreus instead does not have city fights, so there is no reason to starve those cities, and it makes sense for Arboreus to be more fertile. You still want cities specialized in food that provide it to other cities though, because trading is fun.
The main way to realize this, is by simply the prestige value of fields to a negative value. This way it becomes impossible to have a big city and also have it sustain itself. You will never get to have both the necessary food and prestige. A city to reach max rank needs the support of other cities. The fertility of Arboreus should be such that one rank 9 city providing food is enough for another city to reach max rank.On Syndesia you should need one and a half. So probably the fertility of Arboreus should be set to 150% and then the food requirements per rank of city should be rescaled appropriately. Naturally for a Syndesian city having a city from Arboreus supply you with food is a perfectly valid option.
As I previously said, for a guild keeping a city on Syndesia is a high risk high reward scenario. Harder to do, but also is worth double the techs.
Another important change to be made, is to lower the amount of players required to found a city. I would set it to 5. You want all cities taken. The cost of founding one isn't cheap, so if a group of players believe that he was what it takes to keep a city around, they should have the chance to try.
Tldr:
Techs less restrictive and more based on enchants and resource gathering. Massive tech tree with lots of very specific options to force cities in specializing. Less food on Syndesia, more on Arboreus. More techs on Syndesia, less on Arboreus. Easier to found cities.
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If/when we get Tartarus that could have towns with even higher risk/reward returns. But otherwise I agree with spoletta that arborious having 150% fertility, syndesia 100%, and maybe Tartaros 50% is a good and easy way to set city conflict levels
And tech points at 1:2:3 would be quite the incentive
True, you might have very large guilds having farming towns in arborious to feed their Tartaros town but they would have to transport all that which gives more pvp content
I fear that only needing 5 ppl to start a town will cause unhappily crushed dreamers in syndesia after the protection wears off and that terra will be subject to the tyrany of whoever land rushes first. I think that 20 players minimum is good for terra otherwise we may see more dead and decaying cities there again like what happened during the last 'early access' fiasco
If you really want to decrease it, then 10 might be ok to start the city... but if the city does not require 20+ citizens like it does now then there is little to no reason why a town would ever give access to outsiders.
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@spoletta said in The future of cities:
On one hand, you can't remove tech trees. They specialize a city, which creates treading opportunities between different cities, and also gives value to ranking up the city, which in turns creates a need for food and consequently opportunities for conflicts between cities (on Syndesia).
The tech tree can be renamed to something else and can be filled with perks as a bonus for the player instead of making crafting less suppressive.
Don't have any gating on production given by the tech tree.
You write that and two sentences later you suggest to prevent ppl from enchanting their stuff if the tech perk is not activated.. you just move the problem from A to B without solving it
In addition, the tech tree should focus on the resource part, which is normally what really characterizes a city. The size of the tree should be massive. With each resource having a specific tech i.e. bronze, mammoth hide, blazium oil. These techs unlock another craft to get those materials, which has slightly better returns, for example "Bulk Arboreal Dragon Leather" instead of tanning skins to leather in ratio of 5:5 in increments of 5, it instead works in increments of 10 and with a 10:11 ratio. Ingots could go from the 3+fuel : 2 to 15+5xfuel : 11. Oils from 2:5 to 4:11. These are simply additional crafts to make.
I agree here, but I'd keep it simpler by just adding a % bonus based on perk-level to not consume parts of the ressources or create one more product item (rolled at the end of the process).
With that said, how many points should a city get? Depends on the planet. Syndesia cities should get more points than Arboreus ones. The reason for that is that further down you will read that I'm proposing for Arboreus to produce more food, so Arboreus will have more city of high rank compared to Syndesia. Arboreus cities should get one point per Rank, so a max rank city gets to bulk produce 3 resources and enchant a t2 set and its t1 version to +4. A Syndesian city should get double that. Keeping together a city with scarcity of food and constant pvp threat should be rewarding.
I disagree here, I'd keep it equal and provide other bonuses as activatable perks instead, for example % reduce respawn time of iron-nodes. Or 5/10/15/20% speed bonus of hand-cart/wagon. This would make gathering more attractive within some regions.
Tldr:
Techs less restrictive and more based on enchants and resource gathering. Massive tech tree with lots of very specific options to force cities in specializing. Less food on Syndesia, more on Arboreus. More techs on Syndesia, less on Arboreus. Easier to found cities.
I'd remove all restrictions and make towns more attractive instead of less suppressive. Allow all inhabitants/plots to craft what they want. Also new players might not be aware of complicated tech restrictions and will be frustrated if they invested hours to build up houses and have several treasures full of stuff.. at least as long as they can't (easily) relocate the content of their treasures or the whole plot/house.
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Added some images to make it more clear.
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the city system is bad, was bad from first it interduce.
we should go back, to the time before cities, when you could have build a house where ever you wanted ( some places was no build zone), and let the tech be hard, so people will want to join and make together tech, and this way cities will form without being forced, and the tech will be free, and it will fix and improve the social side of the game.
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big guilds are gonna have such an item advantage and win in pvp
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Added some images to make it more clear
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@rgarrett said in The future of cities:
big guilds are gonna have such an item advantage and win in pvp
The best way to counteract this is to have a city or cities that are non-player governed that can be upgraded by the community.
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@rgarrett items don't make that much of a difference after the recent changes.
Most importantly, the weapons are easier to access, which was the biggest problem previously.
Apart from the weapon, a lot of builds don't really gain that much from being equipped in tier 1 or tier 2 armor.
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I do feel the tech points need to be upped on Synesia simply because Arboreus does not need walls, so they get a "free" point. Also, architecture should just be given at rank 5. All cities will need it and seems rather punishing to make every city waste a point on it.
Now, a perspective on someone who has had to maintain a city in each incarnation: The current incarnation is brutal for cities. While the lack of tech progress has made people simply put down a house wherever and limited the income of the cities, for several tests there has been no real incentive to, or desire by, the players to help build the city. They can simply plop a house down and get the benefit of the city. The decrease in harbor funds has hurt. We used to help foster the economy by putting out buy orders and selling items. No income means no city progress. We are literally begging people to help progress. I know the lack of tech tress has made it easy to ignore the pleas for city growth, but even when we did have the trees it was a challenge to get people to fork over money to help. And that meant it was usually done by a few. There needs to be some incentive/mechanic for players to pitch in.
Taxes: Taxes on crafting should be a minimum of low. There should be no option for no taxes or it's a race to the bottom. For the most part, players don't care about what it takes to keep the city going so they only look at the tax rate. If there is none, whomever reduces them to 0 gets the influx of people at the long-term cost. This not only hurts the city but eventually hurts whomever builds around said city as it eventually goes into decay as a small group of people give up on trying to make it work. I would like to see a mechanic where one must be a citizen to buy land, partially because there is no real reason to be a citizen anymore and partially because I would like to see an "income tax" implemented. This would mean that changes would have to happen to automatically split all gold in a group (or at least within range) so that a small portion could go to the city they are a citizen of. Such a change would provide cities with a steady income and incentivize them to help citizens gain power as well as organize groups to hunt.
Other city income: Allow cities to create buy and sell orders on the market for the city. They could be stored in, or taken from, storage areas. Right now there is no use for the storage plots since they don't hold much and it is just time consuming to put items in, just to take them out again. Using the market in conjunction with the storage areas would greatly help with the city, the players (they can buy raw materials from, or sell to the city) and grown the economy. The same idea could be used for other items sold and the money goes right to the coffers. I know this next part is somewhat of a large rework, but the city could supplement the crafting taxes if they wish, for the city build workstations, or even the private ones in citizen's homes. So a city could allocate X gold per craft paid by the city if they wish. The idea is to get the citizens some return on the income tax and encourage people to stay. Why not just not collect taxes? As stated, such settings leads to a race to the bottom and all cities end up hurting. This should be a conscious decision and based on how well the city is doing. The more you can tweak an economy, the better it is as the game progresses. The best options for the economy are not the same for early game as later game. They need to be adjusted as the player base varies.
Farming: On a quick note, the farming plots drive me crazy. They are just bigger than one square. This makes it very difficult to plan and farm. Reducing the size to one square allows more efficient use of the land and prevents the movement of plots by a small amount to regain fertility. I would also like to see players be able to plant small plots. Since the housing squares are 1/4 the city squares, have them provide 1/4 the growth. This allows players to grow and sell food to city, helping the city as a player and making some money. Since cotton has a use now, players will want that, but the crop rotation will require other crops too. Getting players invested in the city where they live will help with the economy as well as being invested in defending said city.
City defenses: One thing that has bothered me is that the size of the city doesn't matter much when it comes to attacking or defending. The sides are equal. This means a city of 30 people could take on a city with 1000 citizens if they are coordinated. The balance of power goes to a group of griefers.
Citizen plots: People end up investing a lot into their house, only to find out the city goes under or they don't like where they live. To make the economy work, people need to be able to move, but not without cost. The question is, how much cost? Should they lose their entire inventory? Right now there is no way to move without simply destroying the house and everything in it. Maybe allow an overlap of 1 week where a person can have 2 houses, for a cost of course. This would allow them time to build a new house and move items from one location to another. Maybe the cost of a new plot in the new city plus 8000 as gold sink (12,000 total with default housing costs). With this addition, make the tax rates on all plots around town be in sync. If a city raises plot taxes by 1000/week, then it applies to all plots, nit just always 1/2 the initial plot cost. Again, this is to allow for economic changes as the game changes and allow cities to adjust income to provide services.
Services: Cities need more services they can provide directly to citizens. Maybe housing/player skins that cities can buy to provide all citizens. Maybe an ongoing cost to keep tech rank up. This would also help balance the tech tree issue. If each tech point had an ongoing cost, it would behoove citizens to help fund the city and not just rely on a few people to keep it going.
Recipes: Not directly a town in itself, but an idea here. As it is, recipes have a large value in the beginning then quickly fall in price as the demand for some/all falls off. The idea has been presented to do research to get recipes, but this only works if it uses something that will always be in demand, otherwise the same issue happens where the demand falls off and the price plummets. I might suggest using dust as the tool to do research. Since you use it in enchanting as well, the demand would always be there. In addition, each step in the recipe must be researched, so that higher quality would demand more research. This can be time gated to slow the process, but that really only applies in the launch stage of the game. Once enough people can make the items, it really loses meaning. The other option is to allow research of individual recipes, but the town much pay for the initial jump in quality level as well as an upkeep. This forces you to make economic decisions rather than just allocating points. It also allows players to decide what they want to spend their money on. They may have more options to craft, but higher taxes as a result to pay for upkeep. This could really go towards a town's uniqueness if we use some of Spoletta's ideas and have a massive tech tree where you can choose things like what essences you can create.
City permissions: there need to be some more granular permissions for cities and a choice about what those levels can do. You may want to allow some people access to workstations but not crops. Maybe someone needs access to crops but not smelters, or vice versa. Without that it forces city planners to be very careful with permissions as you give away the keys to the kingdom, reducing overall participation in the city development/upkeep. Maybe you want some players to have access to certain storage plots. Even going so far as limiting some people to putting items into storage/smelters but not take out.
Maintenance: Cities should require some raw items to maintain the city. Yes, as a person who does most of the city work, I kind of hate this idea, but it really needs to be done. The more buildings/Walls a city has, the more items are needed on a regular basis to keep them repaired. IT may be simply making sure there are enough of stone and wood in the storage areas and they are removed as upkeep. Otherwise walls may lose durability or workstations may not work if forgotten. Again, if the city can place buy orders for said items and deposited in storage it allows players who like to gather to make money and keep the economy going. The storage areas would need to store MUCH more than they do now though.
Settler group: I don't like the idea of lowering the city settler group to 5. We saw earlier where people would get a group of 20, found a city, then decide it was too hard and let it die. This really only hurt the people who built around the city, especially since they had no way to leave. Lowering that to 5 would only exasperate the issue.
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There's a lot that can and has been said on the topic of cities - I don't have any massive new ideas so I'll just try to be brief with my experiences, as a friends/small group player, having played with and without the city tech.
My original feeling was that cities needed to be linked to item progression because without that, there's no reason to build/maintain a city. City tech for item progress was a necessary evil. Now that I've played without city tech, there's got to be a better way to incentivize the city building aspect of the game.
The gist of what I would like to see with city tech, for crafting, is for some sort of a bonus/reduction rather than a flat hard cap. I.e. Rather than, "you cannot create bows unless the city has bow tech of the right level," you'd have something like, "city has invested in smelting technology so smelting ores takes 10% less time." Whatever bonus you wanted to do that is a bonus, not a hard restriction.
Beyond crafting, and I have no idea how feasible this would be, maybe city tech could be used to grant specific buffs. City has researched better healing techniques. Spend 1k gold for a 1 hour, 15 health regen buff. Or the city has spent a lot of time on wildlife research - all mobs in their area spawn 10% faster.
TLDR: Don't limit players/homes based on cities. You can make cities important, and tied into the other systems, by granting cities the ability to buff, improve, or otherwise give a bonus to those other systems.
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I don't like every aspect of what @GorethMolier described, but it definitly goes into the right direction.
Also I want to mention here:
New players might make misstakes and probably invest a massive load of time into setting up their houses.
We need tools to help them moving to another place once they learn more about the game and they realize their misstakes... an massive gold-sink (20-30k?) to move their complete plot (including everything within the treasures) would be a good solution IMO.
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One more thing about cities. There needs to be a way to reclaim house plots if a player stops playing or is just no longer welcome. Requiring that a player remain a citizen of a town would be one way to do it. Give the player a week or so to move things before it is reclaimed by the city so they don't just lose everything to a dictator. The lack of control over housing plots could cause problems as the game progresses and new, active players, have no way to be embraced by the city while older, dead players cannot be pruned.
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Another city idea. Stables to breed horses. Would be nice to be able to give out (or sell horses) without having to track them down.
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Right now horses are mostly useless. They are eternal so once you have one, you don't need another.
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Same as recipes in the endgame. We need a second life of these elements, once their first use-case is not relevant anymore.
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Easy to fix, give the horses X amount of Lives (Maybe the Quality of the horse are deciding how much) and the market will be there also for Horses!
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i think this would require implementation/work since such a system doesn't exist anywhere in the games...
i could at least imagine a durability value similar to the other items.. shouldn't be that much work
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@Ignator Perhaps every time your horse "dies" because it gets whomped on, there is a % chance that its highest stat permanently loses a point. It would keep the churn for fast strong horses in constant motion at the top end, and the old nags left over could go to n00bs or new players that dont know better.
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Horse stats don't have a meaning at the moment.
