Variable City Size

[Pillager]

yeah, the 'tower stepping' tactic could be an issue. I wouldn't really want to see all important field battles become tower sieges.

Having a tower be 'under construction' until your next turn isn't that far out. Like you said, unit production works in a vaguely similar fashion. Still, I agree that it does seem slightly less intuitive than the 'instatower'.

The 4 movement thing might get confusing, and has some exploitable loopholes..plus it makes fast units even better (which doesn't need to happen).

Maxing the number of towers a player could build to five could work. It does seem very rigid though..a bit of a brutal solution.

Maybe each tower you build costs an extra 100 gold. First tower costs 100, second 200, and so on. That would allow a player to go crazy and build tons of towers, but it would get very expensive.

Another way to work it would be to have a special unit tied to tower construction. An engineer, or builder or something along those lines. You would purchase the builder in the same way you purchase other unit production. A builder would move to the location you wanted to put your tower, and would then be consumed and replaced by the new tower. Perhaps, only one builder could be produced. You would have to buy the production again in order to build another.

[Zajoman]

I agree with KGB on that city graphics should visibly differ by the strength bonus they provide, just like in DLR. That way, you can instantly see and estimate the power of the city. I like that there are different graphics for player colours now, but city levels should differ graphically, too, in my opinion.

As for any other cities than 2x2, I don't agree. A 1x2 city seems weird to me. I can't give you any actual argument against it, I just don't feel it's right. On the other hand, a 1x1 tower with +1 city bonus, no production possibility and a large view range is a great feature and I definitely agree with this.

[Pillager]

This discussion has drifted away from different city sizes and towards towers, villages, and their implementation.

I agree with a graphical representation of wall strength too. If I had to choose between different pictures for the player colors and a single city picture (shared by all) for each defense level (0, +1, +2, +3), I would choose the latter.

Having different pictures for the various colors, and each color having a picture for each defense level...that is 32 pictures in total. From my understanding, P&S are doing the coding themselves, but they are paying an artist for each graphic. So, 32 might be a cost prohibitive number.

[Zajoman]

I agree with a graphical representation of wall strength too. If I had to choose between different pictures for the player colors and a single city picture (shared by all) for each defense level (0, +1, +2, +3), I would choose the latter.

Same here.

Having different pictures for the various colors, and each color having a picture for each defense level...that is 32 pictures in total. From my understanding, P&S are doing the coding themselves, but they are paying an artist for each graphic. So, 32 might be a cost prohibitive number.

Yes. And since they have already decided for the different graphics for player colors, I'm afraid there is no way back. Not that I would suggest that at this stage. But there are many other and much cheaper ways of displaying the city level. First that comes to my mind is simply displaying a symbol over the city graphic (1 symbol for each level, so 4 symbols total). The symbol can be as simple as a stylized number in a circle or a set of shields (1 shield for level 1 city, 2 for lvl 2 city, etc.). Plus, there could be a tool tip on mouse hover showing basic city information such as name, owner, level, production, income, etc. It's not perfect, but still much faster than having to open the city panel for each city by clicking.