Idea: How to make unique plan for every city

**Dead Moroz** · 02-06-2006, 17:28

In RTW there was set of predefined plans of each levels of settlement for each culture. So all cities within certain culture looked the same. Therefore after some number of sieges this kind of action began to be quite boring (partially it was because of stupid AI behavior).

Some people here suggested CA to make original plans for most important and unique medieval cities: Constantinople, Rome, Jerusalem, Venice, London, Paris, etc. I support this idea. But it's just impossible and imho not really necessary to make unique plan for every city in game (and who knows what, where and how many cities modders will want to make in their mods!). So even if CA will make some amount of unique plans for key cities, the rest of them will be similar if CA will keep to use RTW system.

How to make all cities look really original without making separate plan for every city? My idea is simple... at least in theory. CA should make generator of casual settlement's plans (something like map generator in games like Civilization or AOE). It could mix different ready fragments of city or create fully unique plan according to certain rules. Such plans could be generated for every city during startup of campaign and saved as temporary files for this campaign. Then when some city goes to next level programm will use earlier created plan of this city as basis for generating plan for next level during "end of turn".

Of course it means that starting and in-between-turns time will be longer. But I guess most of us will agree to sacrifice this speed to quality. It will also require additional space on hard drive for storing of created plans, but I think that it's not a big problem for modern HDDs.

I wish I just repeated the idea that CA is already developing. :)

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I also have another suggestion, not straight related to idea above. I think that CA should bring rivers into city maps. Almost every old city (at least in Europe) was built along river banks. Some of cities were even divided into several parts by river. Unfortunately in RTW all cities on battlemap were far from rivers even if they were situated near river on strategy map. It's great that CA made walls (and I hope other buildings too) follow a relief of hills and mountains. So I think CA should make the same for rivers (just imagine battles on city bridge!).

**City walls** · 02-06-2006, 21:12

I like it. The generator could throw in some props aswell. Like wagons, pets, urns lol, plants etc.

**sapi** · 02-07-2006, 08:48

I'm sure that there'll be some wacky cities if they try that though...

**Duke John** · 02-07-2006, 10:41

I believe CA already has a system that allows city plans to be more unique and not stamped as a clone on the battlemap. They did talk about how it was now possible to have castles on cliffs.

**Mikeus Caesar** · 02-07-2006, 17:14

It would be rather difficult though. After all, the AI had probs with pathfinding in the clone cities, despite the fact there was some coding to help them. Imagine them trying to navigate a completely random city! And there is always the chance that it could cause....accidents, mishaps and general oddness with city layouts.

**sapi** · 02-08-2006, 08:45

Originally Posted by currywurry

It would be rather difficult though. After all, the AI had probs with pathfinding in the clone cities, despite the fact there was some coding to help them. Imagine them trying to navigate a completely random city! And there is always the chance that it could cause....accidents, mishaps and general oddness with city layouts.

Yes, pathfinding would be absolutely chaotic...

**Dead Moroz** · 02-08-2006, 20:13

I don't think so. "Path markers" could be elements of streets system. If everything will be organized logically and correct there will not be any problems. Current problems with units' pathfinding in city doesn't means that all farther TW games must be made considering this "feature" - it means that these problems must be fixed.

**Ludens** · 02-09-2006, 15:19

While a nice feature, I think it would be troublesome to implement. Clone cities do not bother me that much anyway.

**Flavius Clemens** · 02-11-2006, 23:03

Rivers through cities would be excellent. Imagine having to fight through the outer defences and then face a defended bridge. Only downside would be if he AI pathfinding couldn't cope.