fales

I have no experience with this game, sorry. Let me illustrate my proposal in other words. Right now the situation is like this: an enemy army is approaching you and the probability of you seeing the enemy army is at first 0 % (you can't see them far away from you) and then, suddenly, it jumps to 100 % (you can always see them) when the army steps out of the fog of war. After paying for the espionage: the probability would also have a middle step (= at some places the fog of war would not be completely hiding everything). Hence, the probability to see the enemy is 0 % far away from your base, then in some region closer to you, it is (for example) 50 % (sometimes, you can see them and sometimes not) and as before when the enemy finally comes close enough to your base the probability is 100 %

I meant that it would require some work so that units entering the aforementioned area of partial knowledge would or would not be shown and that after some time the state could change. I have no idea how this is implemented and how much work would be required to make my idea work. I do not know what you mean by "units controlled by you"

Revealing the whole map seems to much to me. However, it suggested to me a new way how it could work. The espionage could create an additional strip of vision around your territory with partial knowledge (something between knowing everything and nothing). An example: for simplicity, imagine you only have CC and it has a vision range of 10 meters around it where you know about everything what is happening there. After paying for espionage it would create vision in the range between 10 and 20 meters around the CC where you would know about every building and for units you would only have e.g. 50 % chance to see them. You could even choose how much to pay for the espionage and bigger investment could result in wider strip of vision and/or higher chance of seeing units. Sure, this solution would require more programming, but it could be quite realistic and useful because a large group of attackers would be almost surely seen but a small raid could go unnoticed.

I like @Grapjas idea of showing the vision of multiple units (I suggest 5) at the same time (with all units included, not only traders). There could be some preference for units moving towards your positions. Instead of increased cost for each use I would suggest a count down - it takes some time to get useful information from the other side. The count down could either be between the bribes or (may be better) it could even take some time to get the intel ready (you pay now and after 30 seconds you get a one minute window to use the vision). Moreover, it IHMO better corresponds to the rest of the game, technologies take time to investigate, citizens take time to train.

Please consider my post from Houses, make the mini fortresses into guarded treasures which could help motivate (and reward) players to make more and earlier raids which would not have to be as successful as right now to be beneficial.

After reading Gameplay issue: Booming = Turtling, I think that the increased loot could help also with this issue. Moreover, it seems to me that it would be nice to somehow punish the defenders economy for even a partially successful raid. The reason for this is that the attacker needs to take his citizen soldiers and march them to the opponent (loosing resources gather by them), while the defender only needs to take the citizen soldiers of the resources during the fight itself (while also having defensive structures). Sure the attacker is rewarded by destroying your economy but it is very risky and the motivation to do so could be better. Hence, the loot gained by destruction of houses could have two parts. First part is the one which is already present, which would remain unchanged. The second part would not only give resources to the attacker but also take them from the defender. Let say that houses would represent half of the wealth of your civilization and you have 10 houses, then if your opponent destroys one of your houses, 1/2 * 1/10 = 1/20 of your resources would be transferred to the attacker.

If "paying attention to prices" is to have greater importance for the gameplay, I would suggest to include some information about it into the general info displayed all the time. The top left corner with resources count could for example mark those resources which are currently (very) unbalanced (if you have a market already).

Sure, it was mainly an additional thought on the topic. Some of the houses back then surely had some defensive function and I may be wrong but I would expect an average house was not nearly as resistant to an attack as an average sentry tower, which seems to be roughly the case here. However, I did not mention the idea to make the game 100 % historically correct, it will (and should) never be. But I believe it could add an interesting new level to the game. Also, it seems to me that the walls deserve to be used (more).

Idea: Make houses more vulnerable to destruction and increase the loot gained by the attacker. Goal: Increase the importance of both houses and walls (by which I mean both stone walls and palisades). Explanation: Right now, not only are walls rarely used to protect houses, the houses themselves are used as walls. Players use the defense area around their CC to protect farms instead of houses. In reality, this was mostly the other way round. The importance of women and family for the continuation and prosperity of the settlements is IMHO underrepresented in the game. The houses are the best candidate to represent this. And as such should be of high value. But not of high value to construct but rather when already constructed. In reality, the houses would hold huge part of the wealth of the settlement, this corresponds to the suggested increased loot. Right now, if you compare a house, barracks, a sentry tower and even a fortress you get almost equal ratio of health*defense/resource. This surely isn't realistic as the house is not a mini fortress and the resources for a house would normally be spend elsewhere than defenses. This corresponds to the suggested higher vulnerability of the houses. Unlike a sentry tower, the house can usually be easily put to the torch. Hence, the houses should be vulnerable to all soldiers (with any type of attack). Result: In the end, players should be more motivated to protect their houses as they best represent their civilization. The houses should be valuable enough to be put in the defensive area of CC together with/instead of farms at the beginning and protected by some kind of fortification or ready to defend army in the late game. Some tweaks to the stats of walls could be needed. Moreover, as far as I know, there is no penalty for not having enough housing for your current population (your opponent destroys your houses but does not kill your people) in the sense that you can keep such a population indefinitely. If you can't create such a houseless population in the first place, you should not be able to keep it for a long time.

This is basically what I had imagined. The reason I had mentioned upgrading the CC from one to another is that due to the territorial importance of CC you don't want to delete one CC type to be able to build another on the same place. And on some maps with limited space, you could need to do that.

Yes, it would not provide any additional territory until upgraded to the "next gen" CC. Sure, there would be more things to solve. My goal was to start discussion. It could be even possible to build the basic 1st gen CC also in the city phase. In the case that the players would not be motivated enough to go for the later CC's without defensive qualities, there could other bonuses provided.

Thank you your opinion. I would like to just clarify few things. each instance of the CC would have to look different - exactly not to confuse players the advancement into a new phase would not have to automatically change the CC, it could just unlock the new instance and just like a sentry tower can be converted into a stone tower the CC could be converted (if conditions satisfied) or a new one of the higher instance could be built. as I have imagined the idea it would be a forever change at least in the sense that the CC would never downgrade which might not have been clear I see the different phases as the transformation of the society and as the society being build around different structures (here represented by buildings). You transform the biggest farmstead in the village (CC of village phase) in to a senate building (CC of city phase) and while loosing the possibility to store thing there you gain influence in your region (territory). I might be completely wrong about the historical background for this and I will gladly learn from anyone better educated on this topic. Nevertheless, in the presented idea I have seen a potential to keep the beginning of the game simple while keeping the player from storing resources in the Agora which probably was not the case.

I have read the interesting discussion about moving farm fields away from civic center and I agree with some points of view of both sides. However, it seems to me that many of them at least somewhat depend on the time period (phase) of the game. Based on that I got an idea which in my opinion could both make the game a bit more realistic and create interesting new strategies. The idea consists of two parts. The first is that the civic center would have three different instances with different characteristics. What follows is only a suggestion and its main goal is to illustrate the idea. Village phase: the civic center is all-in-one building, basically as it is now, meaning that it would have the functionality of a drop site for all resources, defensive character, able to train citizens Town phase: the civic center could have mostly technological importance (it seems to me that some civ dependent technologies would be best), it is a drop site for only "expensive" resources (metal and possibly stone and meat), has defensive role (with possibly fewer arrows with more damage), trains citizens but not cavalry anymore City phase: the civic center has mostly territorial importance, does not work as a drop site at all, can only train female and one citizen soldier, looses most (or even all) of its defensive abilities The second part is that the more sophisticated civic centers would require "better" surroundings. For example, there would have to be a market and a temple nearby for the civic center to by in the last phase. Each building could e.g. have a "nice aura" with temple being positive and storehouse being negative. Hence the limit of n buildings required for the next phase could be removed. There could even coexist civic centers from different phases so that you could rule one city and one village while each of them would have its special traits. In that way there could be a very dense and simple society at the beginning and a sophisticated society with at least somewhat realistic city center at the end and it would present the player with the choice of placing the farms next to the civic center knowing that they would have to build a new one somewhere else or demolish the farms to get the upgraded civic center OR build the farms away from the civic center at the beginning. And because this is my first post here, let me thank you for this already great game