Ehbobo wrote:Problem is, a city has an influence area of 5 hexes where you can place resource buildings. And since there are units with 10+ move, that makes it even more impossible. A side with a lookamancer could launch a surprise attack on an enemy that didn't even know of their existence and travel the distance between their cities in a turn.
A side with a level 5 Findamancer can cast See City to find a side's capital and it won't matter how far apart the side's cities are if they don't have the forces to stop the attack heading directly to their capital.
My biggest concern is the buffer zone between two cities. As a player, I would rather have a bit of overlap, or at least no buffer zone, on my influence areas rather than having a volcano right in the middle of my buffer zone that I can never build a mine on. Also, as a player I would rather have a more compact kingdom with three to five cities fairly close together rather than strung out across a continent. Take a look at the map. If you start off in the southeast corner of the continent by the coast and near that volcano, at a distance of 15 hexes between cities you could only squeeze (as tightly as possible) six cities along the whole east coast. I just think that players should have the option of placing their cities closer together if that is what they choose.
One possible solution would be to make the distance between two cities 13. That cuts out the two space buffer zone.
Another option would be to make level five cities only have a resource area of four instead of five, and make the distance between cities 11. I like this option the best. Level five cities currently have around 120 hexes in their resource area, but the capacity to only make use of 15 of them.
I'm not recommending a mid-game change in the rules. I think this rule needs to be considered as your test game progresses.
I have a number of other recommendations, but I don't want to take over your game rules invention effort.