ftl wrote:I agree entirely with the library thing. Look, the library is there, but erfworld units don't actually *use* it. It's there for the bonus it gives, whatever that may be; nobody actually reads the books in it. Wasn't Wanda sort of surprised when Parson did?
It could be a gear in a process that the city uses. The farm's purpose is to produce the piglet and grow it into a pig. After the few turns of it growing has passed, it depops. If you have a slaughterhouse in your city, it can convert that depop into pork products for the city. No slaughterhouse and the depop only counts towards a sale value of the product, which is much lower in value and barely worthwhile unless you only have a handful of units. Thus, the slaughterhouse is pretty much necessary if you want to have a lot of units in that city. This is a completely fabricated example, but it satisfies my need for mechanics. Buildings like the Amphitheater and Library may make it posible for a unit to be popped with a certain set of skills. The Amphitheater could be the Leadership building, so in order to pop a unit with leadership, you need to have an Amphitheater, or some other building that provides a means of obtaining the Leadership trait. The Library could make several skills possible, such as Lores, Tactics, History, Knowledge, or even may be required to pop a caster.
The way it worked in one game I was helping to develop was that the Overlord could assign a city's unit product based upon what was available for that city. The units available were determined by what buildings were in the city, what other units were already there, what special units were already there, the terrain of the hex the city was in (and that surrounded it), and off of the Overlord's skills/traits. Add an Archery Field, and you could start popping archers (or units with the Archery trait). Add in a fencing school or a fencing instructor, and you can start producing stabbers. A library enables you to start popping scholars, teachers, academics, and casters. Casters also had other requirements, such as a tower, and something associated with their school. If the city was near water, adding Docks increased trade traffic into the city, allowing for a wider range of gear and increasing cash per turn. There were even oddball structures, like an art museum and a fountain that could be built. The museum was necessary for a Nobility trait possibility on a popped unit, and the fountain affected overall morale of the populace, making then 0.05% less likely to revolt against you. It was easy to make a city that only popped various infantry units by building a bunch of Barracks and having a few training areas, but it was next to impossible to set up a city that only produced casters. By the time you had all of the criteria to qualify for a caster, you also qualified for a bunch of non-combat units that would pop instead.
Basically, the bigger the city, the more buildings that could be placed in it, and the more opportunity you had to make the right combinations to get a wider variety of units. tat also made it next to impossible to get a caster or warlord in a small city.
