Someone please convince me that City Sites are a good thing

[Richon]

So, I have started playing the demo, in the hopes of forming an opinion in time to take advantage of the sale (should I choose to buy). So far, there are a lot of mechanics I find interesting. But I feel like the concept of City Sites is very limiting, and leaves much of the world looking and feeling empty. But, then again, I haven't gotten very far yet (only played the first two tutorials thus far).

So, what I want is for someone who is very familiar with the game to explain to me why they believe City Sites are actually an improvement over the freedom in games like Civ to build cities almost anywhere. Please help me to see why the devs believed this was a good choice.

[Fluffster]

Originally posted by mk11:

Originally posted by Fluffster:

An in game option to select city site density in the game setup is being added in the next patch.

Will that just apply to random maps?

Yes, random maps only

[HB]

Originally posted by Fluffster:

An in game option to select city site density in the game setup is being added in the next patch.

Test build version is not allowing mods, so could not test this new city density the way i wanted, ( Edit it was an Epic thing so not a bug ) but the test build implies your doubling the city distance so you might expect around half the map your used to, to be outside of base city radius, but it looks at first pass to be more like 20% or 10%. Was c20% the goal? or was reducing city location numbers, the prime mover in this. Either way, taking your scout 2 turns to reach your bonus city site is going to take getting used to!


C:\Program Files\Epic Games\OldWorld\Reference\XML\Infos\globalsInt <Entry>

<zType>MIN_CITY_SITE_DISTANCE</zType>
<iValue>8</iValue>
</Entry>

globalsInt is where you can change the city min distance, so you can double it or shorten the 8 hex distance between city sites.

Ludicrous = 32767 hex tiles this produced 251 city sites for a 6 player game using min 8 hex, if you go ballpark that city starts with c50 hex tiles before you expand out, then 38% of the map playing area, is inside city sites when you start, or 62% is awaiting to be expanded into. Or if its 25 hex tiles its 19% and 81%

Latest test build halves the city sites generated, on average, so 19% of the playing area starts out in city radius, or 81% is awaiting to be expanded into.or if 25 hex tiles, 9 and 91%

[Azurewrath]

Now that the game is on discount, better talk about it a bit for passerby.

Some ppl may think city sites make them can't "have full control" or calculate tiles precisely (min/max?) so it's bad.
But I have to say they are narrow-minded (no pejorative) or they ignored something.

1) You could treat city sites as "difficult". Why ppl accept difficulty of giving AI nations % bonus and resources, (AI got huge bonus in high diff in other 4X. Experienced players and hardcores accept it), but don't accept it in another 'form'?

2) It brings another layer of thinking, which is good for strategy games.
Let me have a example, say roguelike/lite, its core is not just 'random' but making choices and thinking under the imperfect resource the RNG give you.
Well maybe it's not a proper example but I hope ppl can get what I mean.

Let alone 1, there are 4 or 5 ways to 'gain' tiles. Do not think you cant get that tile if it's in a distant.
2, Some 4x games about universe, the stars or star systems are "city sites" in another form, why accept them but not Old World?
3, There is MOD about it like dev said above.

[po00r]

I like city sites because I hated how AIs in civ could settle right next to my cultural borders and start stealing my tiles. And then a second AI city nearby and suddenly I had to drop everything I was doing and divert all my resources to support the unofficial cultural war. Or declare a hot war I wasn't ready for. Or forget that great city and the great resources nearby and let it rot. Honestly, city sites for me is one of the most appealing aspects of this game (that I'm revisiting after a few months!).

[HB]

Originally posted by Fluffster:

An in game option to select city site density in the game setup is being added in the next patch.

Because the overall potential number of city sites is greatly reduced, and the AI distance to human player has remained a constant value, the odds of being next to an AI from the start, have increased. Before finding a single barb, i found nearby 2 AI capitals and third at mid range on a ludicrous map.
https://youtu.be/ZutKNB0u0lk

[Henrique Lique]

to be honest the amount of micromanage game already requires, i would love if could have capital administration and vassals where we just make requisitions.

Now imagine if you have 20 cities like rome has, it would be painful. (Rome itself only directly administered a few of them) The game address lack of cities with towns and hamlets

Of course a bigger map would be great with tons of cities like in real world, but very big maps requires nasa pc.

One thing i do feel oldworld fails is having pops on towns. I like that big cities are scarce, but towns should should be plentiful, generate more bonus adjacencies and have pops themselves to reflect developed towns x villages

[Henrique Lique]

For example, a safe territory could have very profitable towns while territories with raider presence would have much more problematic towns.

[HB]

Originally posted by HB:

Originally posted by Fluffster:

An in game option to select city site density in the game setup is being added in the next patch.

Because the overall potential number of city sites is greatly reduced, and the AI distance to human player has remained a constant value, the odds of being next to an AI from the start, have increased. Before finding a single barb, i found nearby 2 AI capitals and third at mid range on a ludicrous map.
https://youtu.be/ZutKNB0u0lk

One solution, which requires a text edit only, is to make the distance to Ai *3 whatever the city distance value is set as, so that puts more city sites between human and AI and often pushes the human to the map edge rather than a central position between the AI factions.

[HB]

Originally posted by Henrique Lique:

to be honest the amount of micromanage game already requires, i would love if could have capital administration and vassals where we just make requisitions.

You mean more autonomous cities i think. Have you looked at the mod that gives you that https://mod.io/g/oldworld/m/automate-cities The newish city density allows you to have quite a different range for number of city sites, pleasing everyone i would think.

Originally posted by Henrique Lique:

Now imagine if you have 20 cities like rome has, it would be painful. (Rome itself only directly administered a few of them) The game address lack of cities with towns and hamlets

Roman Empire was c1,600,000 square miles with c850 Cities, so you can get that level/ratio of cities in game by tweaking the values.

Originally posted by Henrique Lique:

Of course a bigger map would be great with tons of cities like in real world, but very big maps requires nasa pc.

I dont know if that quite right, i play on uber map sizes and 20 secs a turn is not a big ask, War in the East 2 can run to several minutes a turn and that is annoying.

Originally posted by Henrique Lique:

One thing i do feel oldworld fails is having pops on towns. I like that big cities are scarce, but towns should should be plentiful, generate more bonus adjacencies and have pops themselves to reflect developed towns x villages

More granulation would be nice, but i dont see what is there already is an issue in and of itself.

[Groo the one]

Originally posted by Henrique Lique:

Of course a bigger map would be great with tons of cities like in real world, but very big maps requires nasa pc.

If you want to find out, if your PC meets the requirements of NASA, make use of this mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2863544568

[HB]

Originally posted by Groo the one:

Originally posted by Henrique Lique:

Of course a bigger map would be great with tons of cities like in real world, but very big maps requires nasa pc.

If you want to find out, if your PC meets the requirements of NASA, make use of this mod:

Of course the jump from c8k to 15k hexes is quite big, so you can edit the size you dont want to use, (for example the biggest which is v32k hex map, or the smallest map and you never use it) to something more than huge c8k, but less than the 15k, so edit it to be 10,000 hexes or 12,000 hexes, which is the size you feel is best for you and want to play on.

[Dale Kent]

Just for some fun and to see if a normal gaming PC could handle it, about a year ago I changed the map storage type and was able to play on maps of 75,000 tiles.

Bigger than that and ran into problems with map generation scripts.

[Fluffster]

Originally posted by HB:

Originally posted by Fluffster:

An in game option to select city site density in the game setup is being added in the next patch.

Because the overall potential number of city sites is greatly reduced, and the AI distance to human player has remained a constant value, the odds of being next to an AI from the start, have increased. Before finding a single barb, i found nearby 2 AI capitals and third at mid range on a ludicrous map.
https://youtu.be/ZutKNB0u0lk

Thanks for highlighting this. Minimum AI distance will scale with city site density in the next patch and there are some bugs with sites potentially starting too close for the settings which will also be resolved.

[HB]

Originally posted by Fluffster:

Thanks for highlighting this. Minimum AI distance will scale with city site density in the next patch and there are some bugs with sites potentially starting too close for the settings which will also be resolved.

Your welcome. So the Ai to Ai start locations will scale with map size as well?, ie bigger map more distance between start locations for Ai to AI as well as Ai to human.

[Fluffster]

Yes, my understanding of the code is that minimum distance scales with map size as well.