Borough/ city center upgrade

[Dillon]

I'm playing as the cultists and my one and only city is on the edge of my one and only region. The main quest wants me to upgrade my city center, but I can't get 4 boroughs around it because 2 of the adjacent tiles are in the other region. Does anyone know if there are any alternative ways to upgrade or move one's city center?.Or at the least if theres a way to skip that quest?

[Groo the one]

There is no alternative. You should choose the place for settling your city (especially as cultists, having only one - except you can get more by diplomacy actions) carefully. As cultists you can level up your district tiles (special buildings "count" as districts, too - not ressource extractors, except the "upgrades" from pearl research -> Shifters DLC) / city center to level 3 (other factions stop at level 2). The following link should give you an idea, what kind of "city building" is useful, to have maximum profit of: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3236-another-alternative-to-the-district-leveling-mechanic

[the_charch]

shy of restarting you can salt the earth and get the settler back, but you'd lose w/e buildings u had. basicly restart, cause cultists want a big open area to go for either the pyramid, or the strip method. also districts beside the ocean will let you do ships if your playing tempest.

[RottenTomato]

Originally posted by MasterDev:

I'm playing as the cultists and my one and only city is on the edge of my one and only region. The main quest wants me to upgrade my city center, but I can't get 4 boroughs around it because 2 of the adjacent tiles are in the other region. Does anyone know if there are any alternative ways to upgrade or move one's city center?.Or at the least if theres a way to skip that quest?

nope u cant.. u r doomed to never complete that quest :P only option is to restart the game or salt your city

[korac]

It's kinda funny you should raise this issue, actually, as one of my only real gripes about this game is how all too often the AI does that very same thing when founding new cities - plonking it down as soon as the settler crosses the border, regardless of how suitable (or more often, not) that location might be for future growth. Likewise, they seem to pay little or no attention to such as anomalies, rivers, coastline or even basic terrain values.

Maybe it's a defensive measure: I look at all those piddling, useless, ill-placed little towns and tend to think, "why even bother taking those?"

My only other real issue with the game? Salting the earth. Apparently my army is powerful enough to destroy the armed defenders of these useless, ill-placed tiny towns, but not strong enough to simply torch the place against the wishes of the local - and unarmed - populace. I know it's a fantasy / sci-fi game, but there are certain inescapable realisms (as history has proven all too well) that games should not try to rewrite. 'Might makes right' is one of them.

[the_charch]

yeah the ai sucks at placing cities. it would also be nice if on a large map when i hit spread i don't run into someone within 2 regions of me.
the roving clans heroes have a skill that makes towns gain loyalty faster. it is low on the tree thankfully. also pretty much the delay in salt the earth is to slightly slow down steam rolling i guess. maybe it is a much bigger deal in mp, for single my last match i got tired of waiting for tech win (had 2/ 6) and was just shy of the influence for the quest line set population to tier 4 for wild walkers, so i bought like 24 dust 3 archers and owned the rest of the computer cities.
the forgotten were attacking or being attacked by the drakons when i stumbled onto them and after taking out the forgotten, drakkens were peaceful enough to let me keep the cities. i was just getting them into normal mode when the spies started and they closed borders on me. 2 turns later and i won both by supremecy and elimination.

[korac]

I do see your point, but if the poor mechanic for Salting the Earth is indeed to slow down steam-rolling, then it's both badly thought out as well as a poorly disguised ploy for that purpose, since the end result just makes things feel more tedious and, in a way, the gains almost worthless (if poorly placed originally). It takes such a long time to either build a new conquest into something worth having, or to scrap it and start again from scratch in a better location, that it severely reduces the value of conquering it in the first place - and therefore the fun and feeling of accomplishment from doing so. Definitely not good for a 4x game... It also makes the faction scores seem kinda hollow, in hindsight, since so much of that score is obviously based on how many of these pathetic little towns each faction controls - i.e. quantity, not quality.

It's a shame really, as EL comes so close to being a truly great game but fails badly on just a few critical issues. I've had my money's worth though, no denying that. :D

[Dillon]

Ohh dang. I guess I'm gonna have to risk salting the earth. Thanks everyone!

[Spacesuit Spiff]

I would just abandon the quest for this run, but either could work.

It's amusing how badly the AI places cities. I saw one settle a region in such a way that the city only had one adjacent tile in that region, and that next tile also only had one adjacent tile. Gonna be charitable and say it's because I was chasing the Settler, but still...

[Dillon]

Yeah I changed my mind on the new city thing. Seemed such a waste of progess. Still lovin the game though.