Too many cities !!

[Spyre2000]

Maybe change the food or gold vs population system, more population in your city will deplete your income much faster. Currently pop=-1 resource.

Larger cities cost more to maintain? That would only encourage city spam more as people would want lots of small cities to avoid the "Large city tax" fee.

I do think a change to city population growth could be used to help curb city spam though. Something like you get a flat population growth based on the extra food you have and it is divided among all your cities. For example say each extra food gives you +10 population growth and you have 10 extra food. This would give you 100 extra population growth which would then be divided among all your cities. So a player with 5 cities would get +20 growth in each city where as a player with 10 cities would only get +10 growth. This way the empire with more cities would have more cities that grow slower then the player who has fewer cities that grow faster.

To help truly make this work though it would likely need to have a flat population growth bonus applied to the empire. Plus greatly reduce the natural growth rate of each city to make the food amount much more important. In fact I think this would be a nice setup to make food matter more in the game period. Because right now you don't really need much and it's pretty easy to just have the bare minimum need for upkeep.

[ColdAshen]

Thats it, you can, not you must!

I like it as it is, city building atm will be limited from space, that include space occupied by the other lords.

Sorry jk_bonn, but what you like or don't like is errelevant, I posted my opinion on what "I" want.

[jk_bonn]

Sorry jk_bonn, but what you like or don't like is errelevant, I posted my opinion on what "I" want.

And what "you" want is irrelevant for me, and now?
Every post here is what a player like or don't like, so why should it be irrelevant?

Difference is you can decide to settle fewer cities now, if it will be like you want i can't decide to settle more cities, see the difference?

[UncleJJ]

Difference is you can decide to settle fewer cities now, if it will be like you want i can't decide to settle more cities, see the difference?

Exactly right, we can't emphasise this enough for some people.

If they have enough cities then stop settling, except maybe one to get the quest bonus or to build a temple. If you have too many cities, like when you capture several AI ones you don't want, just get rid them. There is a button in every city except your capital to do just that. It really is that easy. I can't see what the problem is with this approach if spending 2 minutes per turn managing cities spoils your enjoyment of the game.

I do still feel city sprawl is a bit of a problem though. Only because there is no other option and thus no strategic variety. It is like in civilizations you can choose to expand out or build up (high pop cities). Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses but either is a viable strategy as a tall empire can often hold it's own against a wide one. But because cities grow at a fixed rate in Warlock there is no choice to build tall given that someone building wide will out pace you in no time since all their cities are growing at the same rate as yours.

These ideas are not coherent. The reason you give for city sprawl being a problem is that you want the option to build "taller". So even though you might want to build taller you still want to be able to sprawl in other games, so it is not really the problem at all. It seems your problem is really that you want to build bigger, taller cities. Well the game does allow you to build cities quite a bit bigger than normal using the two spells that boost population growth. I think size 17 is practical in long games for your own race. But my main objection to such a suggestion is that this game is not about cities, it is about battling Great Mages. They battle each other with units and spells and the cities are only a means to an end.

Please don't try to turn this game into another civilization, especially not Civ 5 with its disasterous mismatched economy. The economy we have in Warlock is wonderfully well matched to the type of free flowing game based around interesting fantasy combats and spell casting. The cities are perfectly matched to the type of armies we want to field allowing us to build them and maintain them. As I pointed out above you can build as many or as few cities as you want, they are optional and if you pursue the right strategy you can make the cities bigger than usual, if that is what you want.

JJ

[Hassat Hunter]

When I thought about this before I figured making buildings cost money would be a good solution. So expanding isn't so cheap, costs you unit updates/new units cost, and would require more money construction buildings. Also it would make loosing a city more painful since there was a money investment in the structures, not just a time which you gain back without loss when regaining the city.

[sagji]

Larger cities cost more to maintain? That would only encourage city spam more as people would want lots of small cities to avoid the "Large city tax" fee.

I do think a change to city population growth could be used to help curb city spam though. Something like you get a flat population growth based on the extra food you have and it is divided among all your cities. For example say each extra food gives you +10 population growth and you have 10 extra food. This would give you 100 extra population growth which would then be divided among all your cities. So a player with 5 cities would get +20 growth in each city where as a player with 10 cities would only get +10 growth. This way the empire with more cities would have more cities that grow slower then the player who has fewer cities that grow faster.

To help truly make this work though it would likely need to have a flat population growth bonus applied to the empire. Plus greatly reduce the natural growth rate of each city to make the food amount much more important. In fact I think this would be a nice setup to make food matter more in the game period. Because right now you don't really need much and it's pretty easy to just have the bare minimum need for upkeep.

There is a problem with +10 pop growth per point of food - it doesn't limit the number of cities as if you have twice many cities you have twice the surplus food and thus twice as much to spread over twice as many cities.

Having the fixed bonus would work. Making in city food production more important would make things slower as cities need extra buildings for the food, so you would have to increase overall population growth so that cities have more buildings. It also doesn't work well with undead cities.

[Spyre2000]

These ideas are not coherent. The reason you give for city sprawl being a problem is that you want the option to build "taller". So even though you might want to build taller you still want to be able to sprawl in other games, so it is not really the problem at all. It seems your problem is really that you want to build bigger, taller cities. Well the game does allow you to build cities quite a bit bigger than normal using the two spells that boost population growth. I think size 17 is practical in long games for your own race. But my main objection to such a suggestion is that this game is not about cities, it is about battling Great Mages.

I think you missed the point I was trying to make. That is there is NO option to build tall. I've used the population growth spells to get my cities to size 20 before but that's not really the same thing. All cities in the game grow at a fix rate that, aside from 1-2 spells, you have no control over their growth. So for example if it takes 50 turns for a city to reach size 8 then the person who builds/captures 4 extra cities will likely have twice the resources as someone who builds/captures 2 extra cities after those same 50 turns.

The obvious responses is often "Well sure they have twice as many cities why shouldn't they have twice as many resources." But this creates a very limited and uninteresting strategy setup. However if players have some form of control over how fast their cities can grow, other then casting a spell to make it faster, then this would add another layer of strategy to the game.

Like in Civilizations if you focus on food you can get larger cities faster sacrificing short term production. This leads to strategies such as culture victory where someone with a lot fewer cities can hold their own and win the game against someone who has claimed much larger sections of land. In warlock the only reason you can beat AI who control much larger sections of land is because the AI sucks so much.

cities are only a means to an end.

This reminds me of the mind set that seems to have taken over in recent years in the RTS market. With games like Dawn of War 2 and Command and Conquer 4, just to name a few, doing away with base management in favor of small groups of units and resource gains done through capture and hold style objectives.

There is nothing wrong with a new style of game that changes things up but they are no longer Real Time STRATEGY games. Instead they have become Real Time TACTICAL games which appeals to a different audience. The management of your resource income is just like the management of your Cities in Warlock are any other 4X game. It's a part of the overall strategy in the game, and having more Depth there will only help improve the game as a whole.

Please don't try to turn this game into another civilization, especially not Civ 5 with its disasterous mismatched economy.
JJ

As an Economics major I am well aware of the many flaws in Civilization 5's economy. And I'm not trying to turn Warlock into another Civilization's game. In fact just the opposite because I feel Warlock currently has several of the same flaws Civ 5 has.

The most obvious is actually the economy. In Civ 5 gold is king and pretty much everything else takes a back seat. I've tried lots of different strategies in Civ5 and so far I found the one that tends to work the easiest is to build almost nothing but Trade Post for extra gold. Doesn't matter which Victory condition your going for as you'll need LOTS of gold.

The same is true in Warlock as like 80% of your cities will be little more than gold farms. The lack of needing anything other than the bare minimum food for things such as Unit Upkeep and Population makes it a fairly worthless resource. I've even noticed you can have a large negative food income with very little impact on your empire. Mana is only useful up to a point because after a curtain point you can't use it fast enough due to casting limitation.

There is a problem with +10 pop growth per point of food - it doesn't limit the number of cities as if you have twice many cities you have twice the surplus food and thus twice as much to spread over twice as many cities.

Having the fixed bonus would work. Making in city food production more important would make things slower as cities need extra buildings for the food, so you would have to increase overall population growth so that cities have more buildings. It also doesn't work well with undead cities.

The +10 per food was just an example, balance testing for the correct amount would need to be done which would likely be much higher. It's also not meant to limit the number of cities you can have. It's meant to create a trade off of having either a few cities that grow quickly or a lot of cities that grow slowly. The choice of the number of cities to build is left up to the player as it should be.

The fixed bonus is to ensure a bare minimum growth rate since the starting capital would not have nearly enough food production to grow at an acceptable rate. As for someone having twice the number of cities and twice the food surplus that is a completely viable strategy as well. If they want to focus heavily on food production then that is a perfectly valid strategy, which is the point as right now there is no strategy.

Making food production more important would not make things slower, it would help reduce the importance of gold. Which right now the vast majority of cities are built for the sole purposes of producing gold. It could potential slow down city sprawl though if that's what you mean, mainly because people would then have to consider the fact that more cities means slower growth. However they could just build a lot more food production to offset this. The choice is left up to the player how they want to handle their city growth which is always a good thing.

I know that food wouldn't apply for undead. Since mana stockpiles unlike food a slightly different formula would be needed to apply to their cities. The premise is solid but all the exact details and balancing are things that would have to be worked out in testing. Since we can't make MODS we can't do the testing so that's up to the Devs assuming they like the mechanic's premise.

Conclusion
Over the years most 4X games have some kind of mechanic in place to curb growth and strength. If they do not then whoever has the larger empire ultimately wins because the other players have no hope of competing. This is done for balance since if a player is twice the size of another and thus is twice as strong. Thus the only way the smaller player can win is if the larger player is stupid. A system setup so that a player who is twice as larger is only 50% stronger makes things fairer as the larger player still has an advantage but the smaller player is not as nearly out matched.

This is at the heart of the "City Sprawl Problem". It's not a matter too many cities to manage, or clutter on the map, or etc. It's why in Civ4 they had increasing Gold cost per city and in Civ5 they have unhappiness increase per city. Different games have used different mechanics over the years and some work better than others. Like I preferred Civ4's setup over Civ5. When such mechanics are missing though it often leads to a city spam mentality and ultimately largest empire wins. I think this will only becoming more obvious when we are allowed to challenge competent opponents with the addition of MP.

[bvlarson]

Nice speech, Spyre2000! I agree with most of it.

To offer realistic solutions, I'd prefer it if cities were forced to be one more hex apart, and would like to see them take twice as long to build. Those fixes would decrease the empire maintenance without altering the gameplay much, and would help the AI as it is written.

My main problem with city-spam is it is such an easy way to beat the AI. On a large, impossible map, I'm generally unstoppable by turn 100. That's boring!

[shanadir]

We want CHOICES! please give thm to us devs, if your listening

[player1 fanatic]

Well, you do have choices, but in a way how to go "wide", not to choose wide or tall.

You can go wide by conquest, by clearing monster territories (and settling them), or by conquering other worlds.

[UncleJJ]

Lottza werdz ...

Sorry I can't reply to that wall of text. Most of it is tangential anyway, to both this thread's subject and to the comments I made on your suggestions.

I understood exactly what you were suggesting as changes to way cities grow in this game and I think they are very bad ideas, for this game. If you want to play Civ 5, fine do that, but don't keep importing their failed ideas into this game. We have enough problems without making those mistakes as well.

It seems you have not been paying attention when Paradox say they hope that their game will give the same sort of playing experience that the old classic Master of Magic (MoM) gave. If you are not familiar with that game please take time to find out why it was so popular among its devotees. Cities in MoM were very much like they are in Warlock and you could have as many as fitted onto the map with no limitations like upkeep costs or global happines. Those limitations weren't needed in MoM and they're not needed in Warlock.

If you want to spam cities as part of your strategy in Warlock, you can, but you don't have to, there are other more challenging ways to win, just like in MoM. So those people wanting to stop so called city spam are just interferring with the way other players might want to play the game. If 20 cities is enough for them then they can stop at 20 and destroy any extra they capture, I don't care, but don't try to stop me from building more cities in my game if I want to. This obvious point made by jk_bonn above bears repeating at every opportunity

This game and MoM have a similar relationship between the cities and the other major components of the game namely armies, magic system and the battling GMs. I can't think of any other games that have that relationship, the civ series doesn't and are therefore a bad model to base suggestions on. Cities in MoM grew at a rate dependent on several factors (race, local terrain, spells) but food was not one of them, although all citizens in a city had to be fed as did the army. Warlock has significantly improved the way cities function over MoM with much less micromanagement, yet the cities can still produce the same outputs; gold, food, mana and research. The combination of roads, city buildings and area of influence onto the map is the major and brilliant innovation Warlock has introduced for its cities and infrastucture, streamling the game wonderfully over both MoM and the civ series of games by getting rid of the engineer and need to visit the city except to start a new building or build more troops. That is why managing a large number of cities is such a light load in Warlock.

Your idea of boosting city growth by excess food is obviously inappropriate for Warlock as currently designed because one of the races will have a huge advantage over the other two. The Monsters have 2 special buildings that boost city food production, in your scheme this would also boost city growth globally. You already acknowledge that the Undead don't fit into the scheme The idea is simply bad, sorry.

[Spyre2000]

Sorry I can't reply to that wall of text. Most of it is tangential anyway, to both this thread's subject and to the comments I made on your suggestions.

I understood exactly what you were suggesting as changes to way cities grow in this game and I think they are very bad ideas, for this game. If you want to play Civ 5, fine do that, but don't keep importing their failed ideas into this game. We have enough problems without making those mistakes as well.

Actually I feel like your the one who not listen because your keep mis-representing what I'm saying. NONE of my suggestions are used in Civ5. My only reference to Civ5 came because you original mentioned it. Food surplus increase city growth is done on a LOCAL level in Civ series where as my suggestion was empire wide given the unique building limitations of Warlock. And references were how Civ5 and previous Civ game handled the issue of City Spam which was completely different from my suggestion was to show how other 4x games handled the issue.

The other reference to Civ5 were to point out some of the same mistakes Warlock had already made which need addressing. For that part I will admit was a little off topic.

It seems you have not been paying attention when Paradox say they hope that their game will give the same sort of playing experience that the old classic Master of Magic (MoM) gave. If you are not familiar with that game please take time to find out why it was so popular among its devotees. Cities in MoM were very much like they are in Warlock and you could have as many as fitted onto the map with no limitations like upkeep costs or global happines. Those limitations weren't needed in MoM and they're not needed in Warlock.

Actually I'm a huge fan of MoM and Warlock has a LOT of differences. The game was made by the same guys who made Master of Orion series and it even uses a similar system as MoO2 used to manage planets, except it was done for cities. That is you divide your citizen into Farmers or Workers. Even though extra food did not increase population growth like their other game MoO2 there was the option to build housing, which used the cities production to increase population growth. There were also buildings in MoM that increased population growth. There is no mechanic in Warlock to manage city growth which is the point I was trying make, that there is no option to build tall. Building Tall does not mean WAITING for the city to get larger, it means being able to actively focus on and impact how quickly the city grows to get the benefits of a larger city sooner.

Just because Warlock is trying to be similar to MoM with fantasy units, magic, and etc. doesn't mean that everything is applicable. MoM had a completely different economy than Warlock, so what worked their won't necessarily work here. In MoM every citizen produced something. Most buildings had an upkeep cost which greatly limited how many of them you could build. So even if you had a ton of cities odds were you could not afford to place every building in them as the buildings were not applied directly to the terrain or limited by city size like they are in Warlock. Also the terrain effected how productive your cities were which made city placement very important, another thing Warlock doesn't do.

Production in MoM was also the typical 4x style where you build either a building or a unit in your city but can't do both at the same time. Because they were done with production that meant having a bunch of cities would not get you a bunch of troops at the same rate. A few larger cities could turn out troops much faster then a bunch of smaller cities. In Warlock the main limitation is gold on troop production and you need a huge gold income to build late game troops which means that the upkeep on those late game troops will be a drop in the bucket compared to their original cost. Where as in MoM since you relied more on production to build the troops and gold to upkeep them you were much more limited on how many troops you could field since gold income was rather limited. In warlock any front line city can quickly pump out high end troops if you have the gold, just make a basic unit then pay for upgrades and perks.

MoM is a lot closer in terms of Economy to Civ than Warlock is. The only thing that Warlock has more in common with Civ5 than MoM does is the 1UPT. So from now on I'll use MoM as comparison instead of Civ since it's just as valid. I already have MoM installed on my PC so I can bring it up to double check things if need be. I haven't played it in a while because Warlock is scratching that itch these days, but I'd like to see Warlock more like MoM.

Oh yea the AI was terrible in MoM too, I play MoM on impossible as well just so it's a challenge. That's another thing Warlock has in common with MoM.

Warlock has significantly improved the way cities function over MoM with much less micromanagement, yet the cities can still produce the same outputs; gold, food, mana and research. The combination of roads, city buildings and area of influence onto the map is the major and brilliant innovation Warlock has introduced for its cities and infrastucture, streamling the game wonderfully over both MoM and the civ series of games by getting rid of the engineer and need to visit the city except to start a new building or build more troops. That is why managing a large number of cities is such a light load in Warlock.

I don't recall the cities being that much micromangement trouble in MoM with the reason to visit also being just to start a new building or unit. The only trouble was because the large number of races it was difficult to keep track of which races could build which buildings and what units they unlocked. I haven't counted but I feel MoM had more Building and Unit options than Warlock does which just made it harder to keep track of everything.

The only real innovation on City management I see is building the city buildings directly on the map. And even that was done by Elemental: War of Magic a few years ago (Very BAD game, Don't buy!), except in E:WoM each building expanded the size of the city thus turning a 3x3 area into a single tile in terms of movement/attack/etc. In fact E:WoM has a lot in common with Warlock but in the interest of time I won't go into them. E:WoM followed the MoM style unit and army combat, but it took a lot of missteps all over and is a case study now for what not to do. Roads were in MoM and have been in 4x games for a long time. The area of influence around cities has also been in 4x game for ages. Getting rid of the Engineer was done in the Call To Power series which I prefer it's method over the worker style that so many games use, which was you devote some % adjustable amount of all empire production to "public works". Which you then use to buy tile improvements on any title within your borders.

I've played a LOT of 4x games over there years so I can site examples of similar mechanics for a lot of the stuff found here that are in other games. The thing that makes Warlock unique more so than it's mechanics is the game setting and it's combat mechanics.

Don't get me wrong I think Warlock is a good game. I just think it could use a bit of improvement to make it great. It is leaps and bounds above any other 4x game in recent years trying to capture the old MoM feel though, that alone made it worth getting.

In closing. Anyone who thinks City spam is not a problem, I look forward to crushing your puny empires with my huge city spamming empire when MP comes out. The AI being terrible and is the only reason you can get away with not city spamming.

PS: If anyone is interested you can buy MoM on Good Old Games and was updated to run on Win7. So you don't have to go through the trouble of setting up DosBox.

[Hassat Hunter]

If 20 cities is enough for them then they can stop at 20 and destroy any extra they capture, I don't care, but don't try to stop me from building more cities in my game if I want to. This obvious point made by jk_bonn above bears repeating at every opportunity

As said by Spyre, such idealistic view cannot be used in reference with future MP-play.
Everyone will have city spammed... and with that, some serious chance of never-ending battles due to massive incomes.

And yes, that's a problem...

[UncleJJ]

I don't need a primer on MoM, I've been playing it since it was released in 1994 and still have the original version on an old computer I keep just to play it. It is my favourite computer game of all time and despite its age, it has that special quality the Je ne sais quoi other games can only aspire to.

It is obvious to anyone who stops to think about it for a moment that Warlock is an attempt at a MoM like game set in the Majesty universe. Indeed the CEO of Paradox has stated something similar although I can't quite recall his exact wording.

You may not recall it (as you admit), but optimal play in MoM required extensive micromanagement of production, as overflow hammers are lost. On the last few turns a build there was optimisation to turn workers into farmers to avoid lost hammers and maximise food production in the city and hence improve production elsewhere (keeping global food constant) or even to produce excess food for more gold (2 food = 1 gold, as in Warlock). Another major source of micromangement was the use of gold to rush buy units and buildings. In my games a major use of gold was for this purpose and not upkeep of units as you state, I seldom paid much as my Fame reduced the gold costs to nearly zero Another use of spare gold was to convert to mana to pay for spells and enchanment upkeep. Nearly all mana from nodes and cities was channeled into increasing the Great Mage's casting skill. Managing the global tax rate and city happiness was the most important factor in generating excess gold. The economy in MoM was a management nighmare, but very satisfying when done well. It was absolutely nothing like any version of Civ.

Warlock has a much better economy, well thought out, very streamlined and slick. Production (hammers) and gold have been merged simplifying unit production. It allows me to concentrate on the enjoyable parts of the game.

My greatest wish is that the Warlock gets a better magic system, the spell casting in Mom was much better, but that is a subject for another thread, this one is on city spam.

The city spam in Warlock is very much like it was in MoM and so it doesn't worry me at all. Players that feel they have too many cities can just stop building them or even delete some, that's up to them, I just wish they'd stop trying to change the game and make other players, like me, play the same way. That worries me as it would spoil a most promising game.

[UncleJJ]

As said by Spyre, such idealistic view cannot be used in reference with future MP-play.
Everyone will have city spammed... and with that, some serious chance of never-ending battles due to massive incomes.

And yes, that's a problem...

You are serious?

Few things will be more stupid in MP than building a load of cities that you can't defend, it will just be a gift for the enemy. How many turns does it take for an advanced unit, a troll say, to take a size 3 city? Would that be 1 or 2?

[The Apprentice]

And people who are concerned about never ending battles should note the prevalence of the units they decry as "OP" or "Unbalanced."

Powerful late game units (like Levitating Temple Units) can one shot such weak cities, both illustrating the cost of a playstyle and bringing the game to a conclusion. No eternal war likely with such powerful units in play.

[Black-Knight]

You are serious?

Few things will be more stupid in MP than building a load of cities that you can't defend, it will just be a gift for the enemy. How many turns does it take for an advanced unit, a troll say, to take a size 3 city? Would that be 1 or 2?

This is an interesting point of view, I am quite an experimented wargamer but I wouldn't be able to express an opinion about that. I believe that multiplayer should be carefully tested to figure that one out, but remember that building cities just costs 50 gold for the settler, everything else is free, so why not building it anyways? considering that even if the enemy conquers them almost all building instantly disappear and he gets much less than what you had.

Anyway to limit the number of cities it would be enough to increase the minimum distance between them.

[Spyre2000]

You may not recall it (as you admit), but optimal play in MoM required extensive micromanagement of production, as overflow hammers are lost. On the last few turns a build there was optimisation to turn workers into farmers to avoid lost hammers and maximise food production in the city and hence improve production elsewhere (keeping global food constant) or even to produce excess food for more gold (2 food = 1 gold, as in Warlock).

Ah yea. That's why I don't remember it being micromanagement heavy. I didn't bother with that as even on Impossible Difficulty the AI was so bad you didn't need to. I tried it a few games but did not find the gains to be worth the hassle as I was able to win regardless. In fact it felt a little like exploiting because the AI was already so bad.

Another major source of micromangement was the use of gold to rush buy units and buildings.

Most 4x games have "Rush Build" option. I don't really consider that micromanagement since it's not something you usually do on a regular basis.

In my games a major use of gold was for this purpose and not upkeep of units as you state, I seldom paid much as my Fame reduced the gold costs to nearly zero.

MoM has a lot of nice Wizard traits that drastically effected your play style. Just because one of those traits made unit purchasing cheap does it make it the norm.

Another use of spare gold was to convert to mana to pay for spells and enchanment upkeep. Nearly all mana from nodes and cities was channeled into increasing the Great Mage's casting skill.

Again this comes down to what starting traits you picked and what play style you went with. Converting Gold to Mana was very inefficient. Getting the Alchemy trait made it more effective or simply going with curtain races which had bonus to mana production were often better way to go. I played a few games using the heavy mana with low gold style play and it worked quite well. Something I wish was an opinion in Warlock.

Managing the global tax rate and city happiness was the most important factor in generating excess gold. The economy in MoM was a management nighmare, but very satisfying when done well. It was absolutely nothing like any version of Civ.

This was micromanagement caused by bad UI. Since the city screen didn't show unhappiness you had to go check your cities whenever you change the tax rate. If they had used a similar system as they used in MoO2 then it would of been real easy to check for unhappy people. It would of also been easy to change workers to farmers.

Bad UI (like he poor city screen) and faulty mechanics (like losing extra hammers) may contribute to how much micro the player needs to do to double check things but I don't consider them on the same level as actually intended game mechanics that lead to extra micro-management. Such as the ability to disable buildings. A little UI improvement to cities window and fixing the bug of extra hammers lost would of addressed a large portion of that. I consider the hammer thing a bug because more 4x games automatically convert extra production to cash or simply carry it over into the next production item to avoid that very issue. Given how new the 4x genre was at the time it was probably simply overlooked.

Warlock also already has some micromanagement issues caused by bad UI. Namely the lack of an Empire screen to view all the player's cities.

[Hassat Hunter]

Players that feel they have too many cities can just stop building them or even delete some, that's up to them, I just wish they'd stop trying to change the game and make other players, like me, play the same way. That worries me as it would spoil a most promising game.

However, when that happens, one gets less resources. And a big gap in resources can be win or loss in MP. So there is no such choice there. And everyone will be forced to play your game then. Maybe fun for you, not for them. Also, as stated, very hard for balance. Which really is the main reason why it's worrisome.

Few things will be more stupid in MP than building a load of cities that you can't defend, it will just be a gift for the enemy. How many turns does it take for an advanced unit, a troll say, to take a size 3 city? Would that be 1 or 2?

For both sides, yes. And obviously one will defend, just more units, stretch out. It's not like the AI who will send out settlers by themselves. And the opposite is true as stated, they are equally easy re-captured. The risk (close-to-none) outweighs the profit. And *that* is the problem...
The "gift" will be 50 gold. That's a pretty poor gift, hardly gamechanging. Every perk is worth more than that...

And people who are concerned about never ending battles should note the prevalence of the units they decry as "OP" or "Unbalanced."
Powerful late game units (like Levitating Temple Units) can one shot such weak cities, both illustrating the cost of a playstyle and bringing the game to a conclusion. No eternal war likely with such powerful units in play.

Except while in SP there is just the player with that, in MP both parties have these units. It's not like with the AI captured and it's pretty easily hold, other players will also one-shot your cities like that. And when they meet each other it's not over as fast as when the player hits the AI. And with infinite resources units can be easily buffed or hired again... hence... infinite battles.

This is an interesting point of view, I am quite an experimented wargamer but I wouldn't be able to express an opinion about that. I believe that multiplayer should be carefully tested to figure that one out, but remember that building cities just costs 50 gold for the settler, everything else is free, so why not building it anyways? considering that even if the enemy conquers them almost all building instantly disappear and he gets much less than what you had.

Exactly. Without any drawbacks at all, why NOT do it? You only shoot yourself in the foot seeing how much profit they'll give you...

[The Apprentice]

Except while in SP there is just the player with that, in MP both parties have these units. It's not like with the AI captured and it's pretty easily hold, other players will also one-shot your cities like that. And when they meet each other it's not over as fast as when the player hits the AI. And with infinite resources units can be easily buffed or hired again... hence... infinite battles.

? Just because all Humans have access to these units, doesn't mean they will all obtain them. Setting aside your statement about infinite resources (really? Fully equipped temple units aren't cheap. Also, without levels and several turns of buffing spells- which can be counter-spelled- they are far weaker than those with), cities are still being ground away. Cities take multiple turns to establish and grow beyond size 1. Getting settlers to the old city site in a war zone is potentially complicated by the route being obstructed. Using Meta-Teleport to get the settler there instantly would be a costly choice, burning your spell for the turn.

Regardless, conquering/razing cities will reduce the resource generation pool and move the game towards a conclusion. Titling the game balance towards offense (ie, powerful late game units) is a common game design to prevent infinite wars.