Towns and Cities at the push of a button is an abstract broad game mechanic that shouldn't be in project Ceasar

[Ahnzel]

Creating cities and metropolis at the push of a button isn't a bad feature in Rome Imperator because it fit with the area. The greek and Roman created many cities.

But in a modern area game settings it feels out of place. You can have a huge amount of pops in a location and it won't grow into a town or a city if a god-player don't push a button to create a cities. This is not what happened in real life. Cities grow organically over time or get depopulated trough disasters and wars.

A better alternative in my opinion would be a urbanization system. In modern demographic statistics we divide people into rural and urban population.
In this system a location would have an urbanization level. A 0 would be an empty location, a 100 would be an entirely urban location. A middle age rural location would be around 20 or 30. The higher it is the more you get urban pops bonus and the less you get rural pops bonus (like food).
Urbanization would slowly grow with pops numbers, techs, player investment in infrastructures etc. and would decay trough wars, disasters and depopulation.
As for buildings, instead of being status related you would need a set amount of urbanization to build city-related buildings. Rural-related buildings would slowly get automatically destroyed if the urbanization level get too high.

What do you think ?

 

[Nerexa]

A good bit of cities were indeed created on command, so to speak.
(Especially if they involved huge amounts of fortifications.)

But I also suspect, that there will be a mechanic, where if your pops grow to much in a location, you HAVE to click the button or take increasing penalties. Or your estate decide to take the reigns and "push the button" for you.

 

[Deleted user]

I agree with you. Cities should not be created "using mana" but instead giving the location, and it's inhabitants the rights of town privileges, as was common in Europe at that time. In my country i.e. it's very usual that many cities had its own town charter granted by the king at a certain date, and since then it's considered a town. For example, my town charter dates from 1095.

 

[Moppy771]

Creating cities and metropolis at the push of a button isn't a bad feature in Rome Imperator because it fit with the area. The greek and Roman created many cities.

But in a modern area game settings it feels out of place. You can have a huge amount of pops in a location and it won't grow into a town or a city if a god-player don't push a button to create a cities. This is not what happened in real life. Cities grow organically over time or get depopulated trough disasters and wars.

A better alternative in my opinion would be a urbanization system. In modern demographic statistics we divide people into rural and urban population.
In this system a location would have an urbanization level. A 0 would be an empty location, a 100 would be an entirely urban location. A middle age rural location would be around 20 or 30. The higher it is the more you get urban pops bonus and the less you get rural pops bonus (like food).
Urbanization would slowly grow with pops numbers, techs, player investment in infrastructures etc. and would decay trough wars, disasters and depopulation.
As for buildings, instead of being status related you would need a set amount of urbanization to build city-related buildings. Rural-related buildings would slowly get automatically destroyed if the urbanization level get too high.

What do you think ?

Have you heard of Saint Petersburg.

 

[Miroku20X6]

Let’s keep in mind what Johan said in the responses: “It takes several years to upgrade a town to city, and that only so it can ALLOW all other things.”

This won’t be an EU4 instant-metropolis hack. Over the course of several years, the efforts of the state will help a location to urbanize. That doesn’t mean it instantly gains pops by magic. It means that after several years you’ll be able to further develop the location.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Your OP seems to imply that towns and cities will magically pop up in an instant. It doesn't sound like it works that way.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

Agreed. I hope its not like in IR.

it should happen organically. Or at least have some requirements and depend upon granting a local privilege that empowers the burghers.

 

[InvisibleBison]

I don't think this is going to be a significant issue. Johan has clarified that the process of becoming a city isn't instant, and it seems likely that becoming a town will similarly not be instant. In theory it could be nice for locations to become towns and towns cities on their own, but so long as the game provides the player with information about where it would and wouldn't make sense to upgrade a location/town, that's just a matter of different design philosophies yielding different games rather than one way being better than the other.

 

[Testerian2]

Start of game timeline:

Magdeburg rights - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Later example:

History of Zamość - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

End of game timeline:

Saint Petersburg - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ImperatorRoman]

Please read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status to understand how both historically, and even currently, city status is granted to some communities by the governing authorities.

European nations literally did create cities "at the push of a button" in the form of royal decrees and letters patent.

 

[Ahnzel]

Have you heard of Saint Petersburg.

Have you read my post ?

 

[pheonicia]

Assuming it's balanced well, and there's no exploit around having solely rural settlements/towns/cities and neither of the other two, then I think the mechanic is conceptually fine. It gives the player more ability to control over their food use, and you don't get stuck in a loop of promoting to city, which reduces food output so it then depromotes back to town because of automatic mechanics.

 

[Ahnzel]

Please read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status to understand how both historically, and even currently, city status is granted to some communities by the governing authorities.

European nations literally did create cities "at the push of a button" in the form of royal decrees and letters patent.

That is a legal status that was given to towns. Not an urbanization process. Johan said it will be take time for a rural area to become a town and a town to become a city increasing population capacity and decreasing food production. If so we are not talking about legal rights but some abstract urbanization process.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

I think this level of abstraction is good and it actually represents something that happened on command historically

 

[DukeLeto42]

That is a legal status that was given to towns. Not an urbanization process. Johan said it will be take time for a rural area to become a town and a town to become a city increasing population capacity and decreasing food production. If so we are not talking about legal rights but some abstract urbanization process.

That's where you're getting caught - it's not one or the other. Legal rights to town status granted them specific abilities to levy certain kinds of taxes, run markets, and more. From there comes urban areas, the funding for urban infrastructure like town walls, and more. The legal status allowed a community to experience those urbanization processes.

 

[Amallric]

I think granting city rights should be a State action, but towns should arise on their own if the conditions are favourable.

 

[Ahnzel]

That's where you're getting caught - it's not one or the other. Legal rights to town status granted them specific abilities to levy certain kinds of taxes, run markets, and more. From there comes urban areas, the funding for urban infrastructure like town walls, and more. The legal status allowed a community to experience those urbanization processes.

Good point.

Still if we get a system similar to rome imperator locations will remain a rural settlement until the player decide to upgrade them into a city. Maybe there will be events that push for cities to appear after a population threshold but it's not an optimal game mechanic. That is why I suggest an urbanization mechanics to simulate a more organic development of country.

 

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

I think granting city rights should be a State action, but towns should arise on their own if the conditions are favourable.

Agreed. The line between rural settlement and town is a hazy one, and mostly a factor of how many people live in a location. I think allowing estates to build towns, and having depopulated towns demote to settlements over time, is a good way to represent this. Meanwhile proper cities need a royal charter so instead large towns might lobby the crown to grant them said charter.

 

[DukeLeto42]

Good point.

Still if we get a system similar to rome imperator locations will remain a rural settlement until the player decide to upgrade them into a city. Maybe there will be events that push for cities to appear after a population threshold but it's not an optimal game mechanic. That is why I suggest an urbanization mechanics to simulate a more organic development of country.

The only issue with I:R's system in that respect is that there is no negative pressure to build a city - you don't have to do so or else you'll experience problems from an increasingly dense population, you can just let them migrate out to the nearest city.

Agreed. The line between rural settlement and town is a hazy one, and mostly a factor of how many people live in a location. I think allowing estates to build towns, and having depopulated towns demote to settlements over time, is a good way to represent this. Meanwhile proper cities need a royal charter so instead large towns might lobby the crown to grant them said charter.

"Market town" is a term for a meaning. Market-holding right is perhaps the most constitutive marker of a town's existence, at least for Late Medieval Europe.

 

[Testerian2]

That is a legal status that was given to towns. Not an urbanization process. Johan said it will be take time for a rural area to become a town and a town to become a city increasing population capacity and decreasing food production. If so we are not talking about legal rights but some abstract urbanization process.

In Poland, the founding of cities was a literal colonization project. In later times, colonists from Silesia, the HRE and the Netherlands were encouraged to settle in newly founded cities with special privileges and other incentives. Many Polish cities were "created at the push of a button" by sponsoring authorities (local nobility or the king) to develop the land or to profit from the trade route (Zamość is the most famous example).