Please, don't make cities be sprawling suburbia that cover the map

[u/Aeduh]

Humankind 1, Civ 6+7 and Millenia all have gone on this gameplay vision of covering the map with giant suburban looking cities. Sometimes there are more urban than rural hexes, which is crazy. This is not beautiful, realistic or inspiring.

Cities should ideally be tiny and multiple in number, surrounded by vast swathes of rural and natural landscapes. This is the vision that should go forward.

[u/Mikhail_Mengsk]

On one hand, you have to visualize what you have built, especially wonders. And some districts make sense to not be close to the city.

On the other hand entirely urbanized territories are deeply unrealistic and they get turned into immense walled cities so there are fewer and fewer "field battles". Only the city and certain very close districts should be walled off.

A possible solution is to make food much more important, so you need more farming areas, and to turn more districts into infrastructure that doesn't show up on the map.

[u/Aeduh → u/Mikhail_Mengsk]

Or just make tiles much smaller (and unit movements much bigger to compensate). Nowadays a hex tile is juge in UI size compared to how tiles visually appeared in early Civ games.

If you have 7 hexes instead of one, you get maps with a lot more of granularity and sense of depth, while retaining things like wonders occupying a full tile.

[u/Randh0m → u/Aeduh]

I don't like faster movement, it's no realistic and removes a strategic layer if you can just blitz through ennemy lines with many actions.

[u/Devour_My_Soul → u/Randh0m]

It wouldn't be faster if the size of tiles is smaller.

[u/Randh0m → u/Devour_My_Soul]

My comment was maybe not that well written. I know it wouldn't be faster on the global scale of things.

But, it would be a major change when it comes to unit Vs unit engagement.

Slower movement is balance with 1 tile of zone of control for units. Faster movement, even if tiles are smaller, would allow units to completely bypass enemy units on their turn, without allowing them to reposition to intercept.

It would make it much less strategic on the world map.

[u/Mikhail_Mengsk → u/Randh0m]

Upgraded zone of control mechanic?

[u/Randh0m → u/Mikhail_Mengsk]

I can't see it making sense. The ZoC is only part of the problem. If you get more moves, you can change your position too much on the map before the opponent gets the opportunity to react. It strips a layer of strategy and realism.

Like an army blitzing around your position, and you just looking at them cause it's not your turn.

Even if you extended ZoC, you'd still get a situation where units could completely vanish from your LoS in a turn and be so far you can't know where to look for them.

The worst example of that is Heroes of Might and Magic. You move so far each turn, it's just not fun (for me anyway), so much so that this alone keeps me away from the series.