Just a thought for a world generation option, but why not add a city /frequency/ tab?
Maybe I want lots of tiny towns close together, or huge cities with /huger/ expanses of wilderness between them?
Just a thought, but would adding a way to determine the /frequency/ of civilization, versus just the size of the cities, be possible? Or does city size do that already?
Although I’m all for more detailed options, I’d prefer just to have a wider variety in towns and villages (with the city spawn size as the top cap) so as to give it more of a realistic feel.
Currently, most cities/towns are roughly the same size, and although there is some difference, it’s not by much. I think three things go into this:
-Variation:
Currently all cities/towns are the same, and I think they need some more differentiations. For instance, Hospitals could only spawn in/near towns of a certain size.
-Circular zoning:
Most cities work in a circular pattern, with smaller villages and towns growing towards a main city in the centre. This would take up a lot of overmap real estate and involve more travelling, but would be a lot more realistic and give the player a nice way to ease in to tackling a main city.
Agreed Binky.
Personally I’d like a few huge cities and lots of small towns/villages/roadstops.
[quote=“Iosyn, post:3, topic:5320”]Agreed Binky.
Personally I’d like a few huge cities and lots of small towns/villages/roadstops.[/quote]
Yeah, it’s just about a more coherent and realistic overall feeling rather than either ‘lots of buildings together’ and ‘not many buildings together’. For any devs, how easy is it to work with the map? Could small villages/roadstops be done with multi-tile buildings?
That’s a great idea.
Personally I like Goombah’s idea, it’d let me decide how much and what size of civilization there is in the game. If I wanted just one huge city surrounded by tons of wilderness I could set city size to max and frequency to 1.
I agree it’d be nice to fine tune it however I’d much rather have realistic urban areas rather than just big or small cities and choosing the number of them. As in, I think it’d be difficult to give the player enough options to fine tune it whilst keeping a realistic city layout as a realistic city layout has all the sizes (from outlying villages to cities in the middle).
Perhaps there could be two different systems though, a ‘realistic’ cities (with a city size limit option) and another option which is just like it is now, with loads of random town areas based on frequency and the size constraints you put on.
[quote=“Binky, post:2, topic:5320”]Although I’m all for more detailed options, I’d prefer just to have a wider variety in towns and villages (with the city spawn size as the top cap) so as to give it more of a realistic feel.
Currently, most cities/towns are roughly the same size, and although there is some difference, it’s not by much. I think three things go into this:
-Variation:
Currently all cities/towns are the same, and I think they need some more differentiations. For instance, Hospitals could only spawn in/near towns of a certain size.
-Circular zoning:
Most cities work in a circular pattern, with smaller villages and towns growing towards a main city in the centre. This would take up a lot of overmap real estate and involve more travelling, but would be a lot more realistic and give the player a nice way to ease in to tackling a main city.[/quote]
I certainly wouldn’t complain about any of this, and ‘more realistic urban environments’ would be fantastic. But I think my own idea is still pretty valid too and I don’t see how it’s exclusive. City designs should make sense and be as realistic as possible but there’s no harm in letting the user decide how common he wants cities to actually be, especially as a way of layering an extra challenge on the game and making the player think twice about how far he’s gonna have to drive to get to the next town and what have you. 
Although I agree that more options in world gen are good, I think we should move away from just having lots of separate towns/cities with a space between them. I’m suggesting that there would be all sorts of towns (of varying sizes) and villages in between the cities, along with a much more gradual build up to the city centres rather than just ‘town - space - town’.
Don’t get me wrong though, I definitely think there could be room for a density option which would space things out more and make the build ups quicker, I just would hate for the world gen to be constrained by that at the expense of realism.
[quote=“Binky, post:2, topic:5320”]Currently, most cities/towns are roughly the same size, and although there is some difference, it’s not by much. I think three things go into this:
-Variation:
Currently all cities/towns are the same, and I think they need some more differentiations. For instance, Hospitals could only spawn in/near towns of a certain size.[/quote]
Chiming in for more intricate city generation.