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I think this is a really cool idea and i belive that option #2 is the best way to buy a city, that way ppl can chose someone they really trust (like a GM) and put the requierd gc in his or her hands to buy it with.

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Think the idea is good, I like the 'owning part of a map / city' thing.

 

But I think we should know more about the purposes.

 

 

Like what we miss if we arent in a city.

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actually we arent talking about houses either (or at least shouldnt be) can we get back on subject with this, ent asked for comments and sugestions about how to determine the first mayor of a town and how to start them out of his 2 ideas.

 

You are right. But to make sensible decision we should at least have minimal information about town.

At this moment i most like your first suggestion, that requires no money, otherwise if towns give no

obviuos advantages people could get stuck on gathering 30Mgc.

If benefits will be 'hidden' and require experience of living in towns we might encounter 'dead lock' :)

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actually we arent talking about houses either (or at least shouldnt be) can we get back on subject with this, ent asked for comments and sugestions about how to determine the first mayor of a town and how to start them out of his 2 ideas.

 

You are right. But to make sensible decision we should at least have minimal information about town.

At this moment i most like your first suggestion, that requires no money, otherwise if towns give no

obviuos advantages people could get stuck on gathering 30Mgc.

If benefits will be 'hidden' and require experience of living in towns we might encounter 'dead lock' :)

 

my idea still requires money, just its given to an NPC. with the elected mayors name attached.

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i like this idea!

 

I like option 1, for the fact i am a member of a very small guild, and i think cities of various people is better. Maybe people will choose cities for various reasons, like the map location, scenery, ect.... 30Mgc... if option number 1, how many people would be the limit for a city? i see a minimum donation or application fee, so that 10,000 people don't give 3kgc ect, so i do see a need for a required amount....

 

Now also when say you belong to a city(bought into city with say 4 guild members), and say purchase a house, for your self(or guild house, 4 people)... would you be able to regulate who goes in? like freinds list only? Would you purhaps be able to access your storage from your house?

 

Also new items for games.... like new rings to citys and such, would these come into effect?

Edited by Misery_Machine

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You will have control over your house in terms that you can lock it and unlock it, but there will be no control over who comes in, when it is unlocked.

 

There will be some form of storage in the houses, via permanent bags or containers (to be determined).

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The person who suggested the "Roman way" of making cities has my vote. With a Mod at the top in the same function as the NPC in Entropy's first method there will be a way of... moderating... who gets into a city.

 

Most mods I've seen at work are good at the whole impartial judgment thing, so people wouldnt get excluded just cuz they arent as popular or well known or something. And you'd keep the really bad trouble makers out, the ones whose sole purpose for playing the game is to ruin other people's fun.

 

I kinda feel bad for suggesting this, yet another duty for our tireless leaders. Maybe graduate some volunteer mods to Temp City Mayor status and fill in the mod ranks with newer recruits.

 

Anyway, I think a real person with an established reputation as an honest, reliable player should be in charge of letting people become citizens, until the previously suggested "critical mass" is reached and the city can choose its own leader from among its citizens.

 

Can't wait for cities! Its enough to make me wanna stick around another year or so :)

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It seems that the main problem so far is how to get the whole started without having troble within the citizens...

 

First poit to make the selection on who will belong to each city, is something like the city enviroment description (I.E. 1- Agresive citizens always ready to a war, tecnologyes based on weapons knowledge, "based on ancient greek city Sparta way; 2- Peacefull comunity, nature lovers and tecnologies based on tools development... etc.)

Ppl will choose the city based on their beliefs, and donate money to its fondation.

The development will in a further moment be decided by the citizens based on theyre actual needs and beliefs.

 

After all players starts on their city an election will be need on who will be the mayor. It wont cut the chance of having troublemakers in the same city, but will reduce it drastically, for citizens have choosed the enviroment they like most.

 

Once it get started, the comunity can make the minor adjustments on their city and things will go on with a reduced amount of trouble.

 

 

Its just an idea to get things started.

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Ok to stick to the point from the first post...

To avoid stealing from the city, you could keep a separate treasury account for each city so that no single person has a hold of the city treasure. in this case, the city treasure could be used for city fundings such as town artifacts, unique monuments, increasing city resources, or an army.

A town run by a single head might be much more efficient than runnin with a group of senates as far as i am aware about online playing. however, there should be a choice from those who bought the town whether to run as a democracy like athens, or monarchy like sparta... since someone referred to greek cities in the other post. perhaps those who made payments to the npc can have a vote.... say if you allow one to pay after another and have a confirmation system of course. this idea sounds very interesting. i hope i will still be around for this implimentation since we are all getting older as the years past by so fast.

 

-------------------------

 

Now to the speculations...

I reallylike the use of a different currency as suggested by duck2. as far as possible advantages citizens should be able to declare their profession and say hunting... then for example the hunter could sell a limited amount fur to some npc for those secondary currency, or even for gold coins.

also since i mentioned army previously, it may be interesting to allow towns to hire an army of ants to invade other towns that wants to roleplay as enemy towns or something. i'm not sure if it is possible to program ants to have a/d relative to the person who it is fighting. possible battlefields would be interesting too. too much chatty so i'll stop here.

 

btw i would nominate happy_g as mayor.

sorry been away for a while so thats why took so long to post here if this thread had been out of the picture.

 

Sund

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Can the towns be on a PK map so warring towns can attack each other? and maybe all the town can pay for defenses like some engineered cross bow turret, or a big magic 'harm' post.

 

EG

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Guest Beowulf

I like the idea of a more democratic form of government - to ensure that no one person has too much power. There could be two 'Leaders' that are elected by the city citizens, a 'First Leader' and a 'Second Leader' - not really much difference in power between them except the 'First Leader' would be the person who came first in the election, the 'Second Leader' being the person who ran in second.

 

The two leaders would be in charge of the government - but they would also have a group of councilors beneath them, who are in charge of a city district. The councillors would also act as advisors to the two 'Leaders'. If a councillor doesnt agree with any of the two 'Leaders' actions or laws or whatever then they could veto it, and the issue would be brought to the people through voting.

Edited by Beowulf

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Guest ohmygod

Can the towns be on a PK map so warring towns can attack each other? and maybe all the town can pay for defenses like some engineered cross bow turret, or a big magic 'harm' post.

 

EG

I am bored of this day so post some ideas i have about these cities.

 

Citizens of city A should not be able to attack each other. Citizens of city B should be able to attack city A citizens anywhere and vice versa.

 

City could have trusted captains who have access to an armory which the citizens keep stocked with Giants stones ess armor, weapons etc.The better stocked the armory the better the guards ability to repel invaders. Stone summons would only kill citizens of another city of course.

 

Captains could deputise/remove guards which have ability to pk the citizens of their own city or remove them as citizens scammers etc. Any deputised guard would get a +5 bonus to a/d/d/p/c like a pot but in permanent effect only while they remain guards.

 

The leaders of the city - mayor/city council etc should have the ability to remove and appoint the captains. All guards appointed by those captains would be automatically turned to normal citizens if their captain is removed. Maybe like a destroy guild command Ent threatened \A/ with :happy:

 

Trade between cities. Trade between citizens of a city should be allowed via normal storage npc. For inter city trades the merchant must travel to the other city and trade via an inter city storage npc. If he is a sanctioned trader maybe the captains and guards will protect him from the citizens or give him some sort of tempory imunity from attack.

 

Raiding cities.

Raiding a city could mean Fighters from another city make thier way to an NPC which gives them gc in small amounts some constant clicking like 10-100 gc per click. The gc they get could maybe be the funds needed to make certain functions of the city active like the GWIS so the more gc they take the more more certain functions of the city degrades. Maybe a city wide alert that the coffers are being raided opposite to the deposit ones we have with the GWIS. This NPC would not work with city citizens. and the area the NPC is in would have a non teleport black spot around it. maybe also a beam me spot for guards.

 

I can think of more stuff to say but day nearly over i got to get ready for quick training session before bed.

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i love the idea of having my own house in el !

i would propose the idea of having a testing phase and using the resources we already have>

offer ppl the possibility to buy one of the empty houses around el> them problems and goverment structures will arise and dealt with (mod_regulated)

so if ent decides to build these cities a lot will be cleared and solved naturally

then you could sell your old house back and invest the money into the new cities>

whenever im exploring i always enter the houses along the way just to enjoy it and often feels sad that it isnt used and none lives there

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I guess there could be some monsters in those cities as well... The people living in the city could be given a special cape that makes those monsters avoid them. These monsters are the same yeti or such but they are somehow different so that they "only" avoid that special cape made for that special city.

Example:

Lets call this city "X"

You go into the X city with an MM cape:Monster attacks you.

You go into the X city, you have really high lvl a/d:Monster still attacks you.

You go into the X city, you are wearing a cape for Y city:Monster attacks you.

You go into the X city with cape for X city worn:Monster avoids you.

This monster could have higher stats from the normal monster.

Ex.

Lets say that Yeti has uhm.. 120/120 a/d

The yeti in the X city has 160/160 a/d

 

So that could be another type of protection in the city..and perhaps you can buy these special monsters into your city by giving extra gold/$

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If this is in the making I want to add my 2¢ to it. I really like that idea. Speaking of civ, I have played civ (and freeciv) for a long time, and the fascinating thing about it is the simple maths behind it. But the disadvantage of the simple maths was, that it was predictible. Depending on your start you could calculate when about the game ended, in freeciv it was even worse, depending on your starting position the game ended after some 30 rounds. ELs economy is by far more complicated, so there are no more simple solutions.

 

Of course there will be some kind of a leader of the city. But the choice what type of government, you want to belong to, should be left to the player. Therefore I would take some well known govermental types like democracy (for active ppl), monarchy (for those who don't care), communism (rather a cult), even anarchy for ppl who don't like government at all and put some pluses and minuses on it (for example in civ it was a bonus on resources for communism but a malus on revolts and something - this could be adapted to el in some way, like 3x flowers in communist cities, but invasions to punish them?).

But i don't want to go into this, so back to the leader and what I'm up to:

Of course the leader (or the board of leaders) will have some power, as in RL, not only talk BS, declare wars, but also tune some parameters, like monetary ones. This would suggest introducing taxes. A VAT is the most common tax and simple to code. Just take a percentage of the item value and give it to back to the city, for example if you trade with NPCs (professional traders like bots could be obliged to pay a VAT, too). The important part of it is, that you only pay taxes to the city you belong to! Like in RL, if you cross borders you get the VAT of the country you leave back, and pay the VAT the country you enter.

NPCs in cities would have to pay a running fee and taxes to god, themselves. This income could be used for new projects, wars and so on. A VAT is fair because it's a direct tax that is connected to your consumption. Other taxes that are thinkable are hunting taxes or production taxes (deduct 1gc for a beaver that goes to your city.)

 

On land ownership: I strongly dislike this idea! It reminds me of that other game, I won't tell the name, because it makes me puke. A permanent bag is nice, but a storage is a place where ppl meet, trade and talk, it's much nicer.

 

On pkability: IMHO a citizen is under protection of it's city. So on the other hand he should be PKable in all other cities! A death/killing should be recorded (this might be done by a police NPC in city) and turned into bad attitude against the other city and then it's up to the leader to kick a villain from his city or/and mark him as an outlaw on forums. .

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Why not just do the first option, but rather than making everyone a citizen, just let the person with the highest amount donated as a temporary mayor.

 

Bad idea, really bad idea! Then the evil IG rich people will be in charge! Even if it's just "temporarily" (whatever that means) I don't like that idea at all. The IG rich people already own the bots and can outbid others on things like.... oh, nexus removal stones, for example. Though tons of money goes into political campaigning in RL, it's not people's personal wealth that will get them elected, it's their backing.

 

If you want a democratic city, it's gotta be option 1. Option 2 sounds more like communism - we're all equal here, but some of us are more equal than others. :happy:

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One idea is that each land (map) will have an NPC, where you can collectively contribute money to buy the land. Once all the money has been paid, those who paid will become citizens and will be able to elect a mayor and zoning advisor. There will be some lower limit on how much money you can pay, for example you won't be able to pay less than 50K (that's just an example). And you will only be able to buy land from one city, so you will have to chose carefully which city you want to belong to.

I'd like this idea becase everyone has a chance of getting a house and it's more realistic on my opinion.

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Hello All!

 

In the past, a city borns in particular places: or in self-defended lands (eg on the top of hills), or near the water, or to develope the land (as the roman civilization) along main streets. I believe our cities need to have some "points of interest" in the nearby, such as natural resources (minerals, flowers) or some like that (e.g. caves with some monster/animal spawn). In this way, our cities will be spontaneously populated even by that people that don't owe anything there. Those resources have to be choosen by...the god :) (or mother nature)...in poor words, cannot be choosen by the players. Or we can extabilish a price for every resource to have in a land (the better the resource, the higher the price). Sorry for my late-arrival post :)

 

Marcvs :)

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I like the idea of simply buying land on allowed maps and developing it the way you like, at high resource and/or gc cost. Why does a group have to own an entire city? Various parcels owned by various people, developed to their liking would be more "natural", and would still support interesting game dynamics, like economies of scale, fluctuating property values, trading by proximity, like-minded communities (depending on resources nearby), etc.

 

It might also be easier to implement this way, with fewer new fields for city members, city positions, etc. Although an elected city council would add a lot of interesting player dynamics like zoning, building approval, elections, and other policy stuff, I shudder to think of the work needed to implement this. Another thought is all the stuff in this paragraph could be phased in, once land is purchasable and customizable.

 

Another neat element would be to allow people to name their properties using the already-in-but-seldom-used sign system, so guilds could collectively have buildings in more than one city, naming them with guild-related cleverness. Imagine going to different cities and seeing trademark-architecture from various guilds...

 

In my mind, this more closely resembles RL and has a lot of potential.

 

My $0.02 worth, just cuz Ent asked for suggestions. I'm sure though, that whatever system gets implemented, it will be way fun. :pickaxe:

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I see quite alot of problems and hard times coming with implementing this:

1. Leader/Citizens/Positions decided by money isn't very well, election might work but established guilds could just take over a town as a bunch of random ppl tend to not cooperate very well.

 

2. I know EL is growing alot both in development and playerwise but with about let say 600-800 active players it might be hard to get a city involving 100 of them organized aswell as even filling the cities.

 

3. It's about building too, someone has to work right?=) Well this idea kind of assumes that there will be very high skilled Engineers that feel like being helpful, this might be hard to get aswell, at least enough of them as Engineering will be a hard skill to level up in.

 

4. If there's stealing involved from other cities then I would say there should be a guard system of some sort (that you can of course sneak around with proper tactics), not just lock and unlock.

 

5. Some people have asked it allready and yes it might be too early for it but there has to be a big reason/interest in investing in a town. Not just "it looks cool" =)

 

6. I assume there will be a certain limit to what you can build, how much you can build and where you can build. So there's a need to answer the question "What to do in the city when you have building all over the place?" and "Who get's their own house? Those who can pay for it?"

 

7. Would there be spawns or allowed safe pvp training in cities?

 

Ahh...well might be some more, I can just sum it up as:

This will be one hard thing to get working properly, but probably pretty cool.

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I'm afraid I stopped reading this when it started getting political. I would like player-owned cities in EL but I suppose there would be politics like in RL. So I'd just want to own a house in a city.

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Everybody is saying "wow we will be able to build a town".

 

But i think we will first need is " a cool-down".

What we need first in EL is the spirit of teamwork and real game-play and a real working economy.

The only teamwork spirit we have is to be able to heal someone.

 

We have more and more goodies in game what is nice but and in same time, the game is freezing in a harvester population of individualist who are trying to make these items.

 

If nothing is done, we will reach a dead end. And only a handful 2 year old and more year old power-player will stay in game to pay for 30million gc baby. Even now a normal player is needing years before be able doing higher things in this games . I don't try to imagine what hell it will be to make your own house.

 

I would be useful to know how long people play each day and how long people stay in EL before getting tired to do same boring things. The advantage to be online 10 or 12 hour a day should not penalise as much the player who can only play 2-3 hours a day.

 

So think about it; what purpose should be behind a town. Ownership will not be enough. A town is just the image of the people who are living inside. So don't try to strangle the last players of EL.

 

If only a hand full of rich player can decide what kind of house and where to build, towns will be a puffy project like space bags.

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I for one LOVE strategy games! I'm pr0 at Civilization, Empire Earth (favorite), The New World 1492 A.D. Sim City series(unlimited, 1,2 etc.), Lord of the Rings War of the Ring, Stronghold 2, and Age of Mythology. I love exercising my mind on stuff like that, and getting the chance to be able to do something like that on EL is GREAT.

 

Lets use maps that we already have but let each city come with its own Constitution. for example: Whitestone has 1 ruler (Lord Luxin) who runs WSC but he has representatives working for him in other villages (Grahms, Lakeside, etc.) they run their village how they want but ultamately answer to Lord Luxin. This means that Whitestone is under a 'Monarch Constitution' (with civil unrest from the elves lol) and is basically ruled by one person. The king for whitestone (whoever buys the most land) will become king. He can appoint whoever he wants to whatever he wants (Mayors for WSC, LS, GV, TV) and impose whatever laws he or she desires. However, Nordcarn has no ruling government, the people are self-governed by moral value and virtue. A NPC could determine who runs which positions the city needs - which are few. Like so: Highest a/d/p/c player is made 'sheriff' and keeps the peace, highest magic player who does not have godless is priest who keeps quiet relations with other towns, and so on and so forth (note that the high LVL player can give his/her position to whoever they feel will do a better job, and that the NPC will choose them by default because they have: highest level from all citizens and are dwarves.) Ya know, bring in some concepts we already have in the game like orchans being ruled by the strongest and such, but it does not mean that the different races cannot live together.

 

Also, each city could be given a scenario: Whitestone has civil unrest within trinwood vale, Mynadar is in national debt because of the last great war (hardest city to run in my opinion), Isla Prima struggles with population control over the small island, Taarsengard's Mayor and Dean of the Magic School fight for control of the city while fending off Armed Goblins, Idaloran civilians wish to restore their former empire, Port Antiorra Merchants are ruled by Aristrocrats trying to put down black market pirates, and I could go on and on.

 

Want to know what kind of benefits a city could have? Well heres a few: People defending their city from attacker have +25 a/d/whatever-the-case-may-be because they are defending their home while attackers have -1 p/c/magic/whatnot. Items are cheaper for citizens to buy unless their ruler/s raise prices. Certain skills get more experience boosts and lesser chances to fail for those who are citizens within the city. Factories -although I dont know what kind they are- and local resources COULD be stored into your home. Surplus items could be distributed to the citizens if their ruler/s wish it, or if its in their Constitution. A NPC merchant can do trade with other town NPC merchants (in comes tariff's and such lol) allowing you to buy stuff -ideally everything you need- at one spot unless your in it for the experience.

 

How could Citys affect people who don't want citizenship? Lets see here...

1) Depending on what laws -if any- are made, it will either hurt or help our game-playing wanderers. Cities that want more civilians will probly be more money freindly to wanderers or if the city is in debt or just in it for the money; prices will draw wanderers away.

 

2) Warring cities. Depending on the player, they will either: go towards the conflict and jump in the fray(join sides, be a diplomat, sell their goods, be a Red Cross healer *me lol* and all that other good stuff), use it to their advantage (drops, spying for $$, and whatnot), or leave away from the area of conflict which will probly hurt the cities economy (if it ever escalades to that).

 

3) If a player is smart enough or with common sense, s/he will play the cities by their strengths and weaknesses. Now if players want nothing to do with cities or their laws and live in EL the true -and current- EL way then they would have to go to unoccupied cities and/or become hermits travelling around in tents or living in houses in the wilderness. Gypsies, Huns, Native Americans, African Tribes, and Eskimos are the kind of lifestyles they will probly be living in unless something is done.

 

4) Guilds. I do not think that guilds should run an entire city. Sure they have leader's and all but it would give already powerful guilds even more power in the game. Now I'm not saying that guilds cannot rule a city, but the idea of only letting guilds put in for the chance to run a city is very unfar, if that ever comes to be then large/highlevel guilds would run most cities, they would'nt even be guilds anymore, they would be...dare I say it... POLITICAL PARTIES! The thing is that I dont want guilds to become political partys, now allowing them to be political influences would be appropriate. (Now dont try and disect what I just said here on 4, telling me "well what if a mayor/king/noble becomes leader of a town and he is in a guild?" well good for them ^_^ hopefully they will be from a good guild and bring their moral values and beleifs with them, so long as the guildless common man and outsider have a place and are given the equal opportunity to hold city positions.) What I'm worried about is that large guilds will 'boom town' a city for their own, have no person who is not in their guild in an office and kick the rest to the curb. I'm sure this will happen but tell me, which is higher; the rules and laws by which a guild is governed... or the rules and laws by which a Constitution guide a city? That everyone, is the question.

 

Now tell me what you think, I like this idea and I'd like to know what YOU think :(

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Like so: Highest a/d/p/c player is made 'sheriff' and keeps the peace, highest magic player who does not have godless is priest who keeps quiet relations with other towns, and so on and so forth (note that the high LVL player can give his/her position to whoever they feel will do a better job, and that the NPC will choose them by default because they have: highest level from all citizens and are dwarves.)

 

Well, I think positions shouldn't be forced by the game, because ultimately, people build cities based on friendships, not on stats and they should be wise enough to choose the right person for the job (and choosing the wrong person is fun as well).

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