Why are cities always crammed together in AOW and does anyone else dislike that?

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THE-Black-Knight

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Mar 15, 2019
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Well usually cities are very far from each other. In a typical medieval of fantasy novel, if you want to reach another city, you have to travel and cross an insidious wild world. In AOW there is always a minimum distance between towns that feels really too small. I understand the system is conceived around resources, and one should have the possibility of building a small village here and there, but the minimum distance between real cities should be much MUCH larger. So when a new town is being created the player should have the option of making it 1) a "citadel" (starting with a small tower and developing it to become a large city but which could only be built 50 hexes away from the closest one, or maybe even a lot more) - 2) Or a village (useful to exploit a mine or a port in the area but will never develop too much) - 3) Also there could be the option of creating a fort. (a small fortified structure useful to defend strategic points which would produce low level units) - In any case when you find a city in the wild it should be after a long trip. If a player loses his capital and has no other cities, maybe in that case he should be able to develop one of his forts or towns into one. Cities of course could be built next to the sea, thus being able to build large ships, or next to a mountain and being able to build specific mountan units... since only cities would be able to build tier III and tier IV units, we would also see less of those (finally) and players would be forced to have armies made up mostly by ..soldiers (sounds obvious but that has never been the case). In any case I believe all cities and towns should be further from each other. In the ancient times there was never really the concept of "nation" even though the territories were marked on the map. Cities would have an area of influence, and there was the concept of city-state, In between cities there was a long walk in the wilderness. Also Planetfall really made me miss the micromanagement of building roads, bridges and watchtowers. That should not happen in AOW IV.
 
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Why not play on titanic maps? Then you can be like me and build cities mostly in 18+ hex distances (unless the resources would make a decent city that generates income) and build forts to cap the basic 2 gold mine areas? most of my cities are very very spread out when I play. There is quite a lot of "wild territory" between some of my cities, that I usually fill with forts to have random garrisons to clear the area of any cosmics that spawn.
 
Why not play on titanic maps? Then you can be like me and build cities mostly in 18+ hex distances (unless the resources would make a decent city that generates income) and build forts to cap the basic 2 gold mine areas? most of my cities are very very spread out when I play. There is quite a lot of "wild territory" between some of my cities, that I usually fill with forts to have random garrisons to clear the area of any cosmics that spawn.

No actually that's not the point I was trying to make. In AOW typically wins he who has the most cities, so if there is more space I would be forced to make more cities.

No, I was going for a different concept, a different feeling during the gameplay. Besides doing as you say one would have a lot of empty territory and then a place where the AI Leaders have their cities crammed together which is absurd and unrealistic ...do you know any part of the world like that? Maybe Alaska or some desert... Usually a fantasy setting feels like medieval Europe. How many major city are there in Middle Earth? Less then ten probably. That's the feeling we should have when playing.
 
You mean like in a fantasy novel? Because in large parts of the medieval world (like England) almost all the fertile land was being farmed and even the forests weren't so wild anymore because people were grabbing useful wood from them all the time. Fantasy novels are usually about an adventure so obviously the world shapes itself to suit an adventure.

It also makes no realistic sense to have "wilderness" between two cities. If you have fertile land there, it is the perfect place to settle. Two big cities nearby for trade and protection as well. I think you have an incorrect idea of what history was like based on fictional books and movies.
 
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Only time when there's a wilderness between two cities is because the wild in between is too powerful to subjugate. It could be a huge forest controlled by level 100 monsters or whatever. :p Anything else would just get subjugated.
 
That cities can be close to each other is not the issue, plus this heavily depends on the scale the map renders the world (lowscale makes big cities closer). What would be nice, as an optionnal setting for random maps, is a limited level of development for all cities (to render a backwater area, or a densely populated countryland), and/or a limited number of each level of cities to still render a kind of hierarchy between capital, provincial capitals, towns, etc, instead of having a dozen megalopolis around end of game (my games tend to last long).
 
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