'building up' a city

[Copperhaired Berserker!]

Why just not have the biggest cities built up to "large town" or whatever it was, and have the player start with some advanced units already created?This way, there is still fun in building up your cities, and its somewhat historical because your faction already posseses the high quality units it had for years.

Ahem, dude, that's the level that most cities start at! And you only get hastati and troops like that! in fact, in vanilla the biggest cities are bigger than that! It should be at level 3 for usual ones, and 4 for biggies!!

[jerby]

well, actually. i think it woudl be nice to change that ranking.
village-minor city- city- city ('era' 2) city(era 3)
at lvl 3 you get all teh untis the factions ahd for years. and after 'upgrades' you get the units the 'factions' used at that era ( each era could be 'calculated' by measuring how long it would take to build that city)

this way romans can train phalanx triarii from 'the start' but after 1/2 era's the loose formation triarrii will apear(, with better stats-> technological advances)

[Danest]

I don't think all coastal cities had ports, however. Long after our period, I seem to recall something about Emperor claudius building a new port - so towns were still being built up. And the colliseum didn't come about anywhere near the republic era, though I'm aware there were other large places such as the hippodrome. But yeah, in vanilla, I felt it was game-like to be building up the town, rather than realistic. I'd like the towns to be able to produce what they _should_ be able to produce, such as triarii.

[Greek_fire19]

I had understood that a player would be punished for using all elite units because elite units are generally small in number, for example those goidillic (sp?) hammermen for the casse. If a casse player had an army made entirely of hammermen not only would it be frighteningly expensive but it would easily be swamped by less experienced troops and destroyed. Every army will at least need some plentiful 'holding' troops to allow the elite units to charge into spaces or on the flank and turn the tide of the battle. The way I understand it elite units will be the ones you use (if they are offensive troops) to charge in and shatter units that were wavering, or if they are defensive troops, to anchor a line of otherwise flakey troops. I dunno though; thats just what I gathered from the previews.

Anyhow, yeah, the cities. My only thing about making cities big is that it has to be done proportionally and to a historical scale, like the troops.

For example, take Rome. Let's assume that a 'huge' city, with fully upgraded facilities represents Rome at the height of it's size, with fully developed sewage systems, aqueducts, excellent roads and a massive merchant population.
If we take that as our scale for what could reasonably be assumed as the 'maximum' a mediterranean city could grow to, is there any city in 285 bc that could equal that size? I don't think there is, so in that case no city should be 'maxed out' and probably only Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, Athens and possibly a couple of Seleucid cities such as Damascus should even be 'Cities', the rest being merely towns. (I understand that many of these places were in fact 'cities' in reality, but like I said, the important thing is scale)

I guess at the start some civilizations should have access to some elite units, but not their entire unit roster. Bear in mind that arms and formations did evolve considerably over the time period covered, as shown in the sauromatae preview - a progression from less effective to more effective troops over time is not entirely ahistorical.

Anyhow, *shrugs* thats what I reckon.

[econ21]

Greek_fire, your conjecture about elite units being small rather than just expensive sounds reasonable. Upkeep does not matter that much in SP - you can usually afford to buy the best. But it is hard to get around unit size. It also sounds historical - elite would seem to be mean relatively small, almost by definition.

[jerby]

greek_fire,
about your cities. Rome wasnt that enormously big in 200 BC. And what would be teh problem of having little Huge cities? maybe the scale shouldn't be linear

[Greek_fire19]

Yes, but the scale isnt limited to the start of the game, but by the end of the game. Rome was pretty huge by 14AD.

EDIT: Also, look at how much bigger than that Rome grew during Imperial times. Is it impossible to imagine that given the right circumstances, if the Ptolemeic Empire had crushed the Carthaginians and the Seleucids and built it's own massive empire then Alexandria could have become even bigger than Rome ever was?

What I'm saying is, imagine a city about as big as an ancient city could possibly be, if it was sustainable. That's a 'Huge' city. Nothing in 285 B.C comes close, really.

[Pycckuu]

Ahem, dude, that's the level that most cities start at! And you only get hastati and troops like that! in fact, in vanilla the biggest cities are bigger than that! It should be at level 3 for usual ones, and 4 for biggies!!

My mistake. I meant a city size that is somewhere there in the middle, but not the largest one, so we don't have the marian reforms trigger at the start of the game