Transcript
Andreas Eriksson: Hello there listeners and welcome to the Fog of Warcast, a strategy gaming podcast. with With you today you have me, Andreas Eriksson, and also my co-hosts Magnus and Johan. Hello guys!
Magnus: Thank you. Welcome. Good to be back.
Andreas Eriksson: Excellent to have you back. So guys, what have you been up to the last few weeks? What games have you been playing?
Johan: Well, I've actually, in preparation for this, played a lot of the Dwarf Fortress, which I'm going to defend to the death as the best city builder strategy game, but also a lot of Banished, an older game, but it is It is something like Moundlords, but older. And it's a lovely little piece of game.
Andreas Eriksson: I agree, I love Banished. I thought of playing it, but I got distracted. But Magnus, what about to you?
Magnus: Well, there I've mainly been listening to you guys since I've been away for a couple of pods and I've been listening to the Hearts of Poland episodes and not playing Hearts of Iron, which has been a bummer. ah so so It's not a nice and fun experience when all your friends are playing a Hearts of Iron game you're just sitting there on the side like, I wish I could i could fight on the Eastern Front as well.
Magnus: ah But I've been having a few hectic weeks, so it's valy it's just been kind of like casual gaming. as So I've been going back to all favorites, been playing a bit of Total War, been playing a bit of euro Europa Universalis, and looking forward to getting a bit inspired by today. usually works out like that, that we record an episode, and then like, yeah, I have to i have to test out that game.
Magnus: So I'm starting to hope that that's how you guys are are listening to this pod. That's what happens to you as well, that you get inspired and you think, yeah, banner lords, I'll give it a try. The mapping is horrible.
Magnus: The pathfinding is even worse, but now I've tried it.
Andreas Eriksson: I actually love that game. um It's like half of a perfect strategy game.
Johan: Yeah, it's kind of a city-builder game trying to be a strategy game, and it doesn't really get you all the way, but it's still a lovely game. You still have fun.
Magnus: We've already talked about it on this podcast, that's why I tried it. And we we talked about pathfinding or pathing on that episode. And it's a perfect example of why pathing is horrible.
Andreas Eriksson: Oh, did you do castle battles?
Johan: yeah
Magnus: In old games.
Magnus: I don't think I got that far, to be honest.
Andreas Eriksson: Okay, because that's where they really get lost.
Johan: yeah Yeah, they do.
Andreas Eriksson: But anyways, today's episode is going to be about um it's going to be about city building and city planning and, yeah well, essentially what you do with cities in a strategy game.
Andreas Eriksson: And preparing for this, I have, of course, been playing total War, Warhammer 2, you know, the city builder game. And I've also been playing, well, the last, well,
Andreas Eriksson: You've heard us talk about how I've been prepping for Hearts of Iron and playing a Hearts of Iron game. Also a massive a famous city builder. So I'm very well prepared.
Andreas Eriksson: And I'm actually going to use Total War to make some points about city building later on. But let's just say I've been somewhere else entirely than in the city building space for a while.
Andreas Eriksson: This is despite me having queued up Anno 1800 as the
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: Probably the summer game for me. I've just postponed it until I have my...
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: Well, a few weeks off at least from work. So I'm all prepared. Magnus Hans all prepared. Jovan is very prepared. Let's go. And to start us off.
Andreas Eriksson: Like, City Builders is something when we did one of our first episodes. and We talked about what is a strategy game. City Builders was one of those things where we... We're not entirely in agreement and not entirely is certain as to to what extent a is city builder game, for example, City Skylines, is a strategy game.
Andreas Eriksson: But, on the other hand, a lot of strategy games do have city building components. So... Let's not fight over whether city builders in themselves are games and let's instead talk a little bit about like what are the common elements of city builders and other strategy games and like how does city building connect with so strategy?
Andreas Eriksson: Any opinions? Any thinkers?
Johan: Yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities. i mean, was ah was a from a supporter of city builders being a strategy genre, and depending on which one.
Johan: But I mean, we we have some great ones, which are strategy games that incorporate city builders or city builders being strategy games.
Andreas Eriksson: Thank you.
Johan: And just to to mention a few, I mean, Vanished, as I talked about beforehand, i mean, it's a small scale survivor builder with Research change and weather challenges, they they don't have combat. It's just pure planning. And pure planning for me is a strategy. how How will I feed my occupants? How will I expand my town, et cetera, et cetera. And I think something you talked about, Andreas, with UNNO 1800, I mean, it has a deep economy. There's trade routes, city, cities.
Johan: the city expanding across island. list and ah Personally, I think it's the best one in the Anna series. I know there's Anna Rome coming up, but I haven't played that.
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah, that's going to be so exciting.
Johan: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. When we do the episode, games I'm looking forward to, that's that's one of the ones I have. But I also have Frostpunk, which is ah kind of a dark, moral-heavy survival in the frozen wasteland. And It's strategy meets emotions, and which those are more city builder games. But then we have Dwarf Fortress.
Johan: They have combat. They have all of the things that we put up as defining for a strategy game. But it is also a great game.
Johan: I've put so many hours into that game. and So Yeah, we have the city builders mixing in strategy, but we have strategy games with city building, and I'm not really going to go into Total War games, and because I'm going to wait for that clash to probably erupt later on this episode, because I think me and Andreas have hugely and vastly different opinions on this. But yes, strategy gaming can be city builders, and city builders can be strategy games. We have a
Johan: some great examples for that.
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah, think I think it's interesting that you mentioned two games which are essentially man versus nature. and i
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: If I had to draw some kind of line between strategy game and the and then city builder, I guess we'd go with essentially SimCity and City Skylines on the city builder side and Banished and Frostpunk just straddling into strategy games.
Andreas Eriksson: Because you do have conflict, you do have the versus element. it's just It's not just, can I afford to build this city? It's actually, can this city defeat the elements and my stupidity and the tendency to cause famines and fires, which is what happens when I play Banished.
Johan: yeah yeah But I also think i think it's important when we look at city builders, we have to kind of differentiate between survival and resource focused builders and futuristic sci-fi builders, historical thematic builders,
Johan: it all those things, because one of the best games I've played in my life, it didn't make my top three. I mean, it's a CSR 3, which is a part of Pharaoh, Caesar, and Zeus.
Johan: And I mean, that's the kind of classic Sierra City builders with a historic flavor, God-pleasing, combat, so forth and so forth. And then we have kind of Surviving March, which is a S.
Johan: which is s in the title, Surviving March, it's a colony on March with oxygen, domes, tech research, but also ah aliens. And then you have the kind of classic give City Skylines. I mean, they have the most realism.
Johan: that are It's freedom. They have a lot of modding support. And they're kind of great for urban planning fans. But I wouldn't say City Skyline is a strategy game as much as maybe Frostpunk, Banished, Anno 18, Surviving March.
Johan: is So, yeah yeah, if you get me, some city builders can be strategy games. All city builders aren't strategy games.
Magnus: I'd say well put you guys. and the only thing I'd add is i think it's good if you draw a line because if you all of a sudden allow Sim City to be ah strategy game, we're going to end up sooner or later in this podcast calling The Sims a strategy game.
Magnus: And I think that we we need to draw the line somewhere.
Andreas Eriksson: Well, it has all the elements. Brutal conflict, building your city up one building at a time, trying to take over it, um killing so many killings. The Sims is a game of death.
Johan: Yeah. Put it in a pool, remove the ladder and you have a death house in the Sims conflict.
Magnus: yeah well But it it is a thing, because I was looking at some city builders ahead of this game. There's a game released at the start of this year called Kaiserpunk. I'm not sure it's a good game, but it really it scratched some kind of itch inside me.
Johan: Yeah.
Magnus: It might be might be kind of the like the steampunk thing, or at the kind of early Imperial German vibe. ah But I was like, hmm, not sure is strategy game.
Magnus: And then it was like, Resolve conflict. Conquer your neighbors. i Yep. Strategy game.
Andreas Eriksson: Ha ha ha ha ha.
Johan: And as long as you can conquer your ah neighbors strategy games. probably in some sense oh yeah yeah i know i but i mean when when we talked about
Magnus: This is such such a dumb mistake we made at the start of this podcast.
Magnus: Saying that that's what makes a strategy game. But it checks out.
Johan: yeah but i mean i i came with that and i know i i'm gonna apologize for that i came with myth two it's a tactics game yes i know but it still has some sense of strategy strategy to it And I think we kind of painted ourselves in a corner ah little bit. and the coming years is going to be us three kind of trying to get out of that corner and apologize for what we said earlier.
Andreas Eriksson: I mostly want to stand my ground. Not really. I've already had an episode where I excused myself a lot. But I do still actually think it was meaningful to try to distinguish a game category which is not distinguishable. Because that's the problem with strategy.
Andreas Eriksson: um It's just another word for planning, essentially, which means that it sort of it sort of reaches into everything with the game in meta, and you can see that on the Steam store page that they include everything in strategy games.
Magnus: yeah
Johan: Yeah.
Andreas Eriksson: And that is entirely...
Johan: Yeah.
Andreas Eriksson: and Any kind of definition that includes everything includes nothing. So... and I'm rather...
Magnus: Please don't remind us of the pornographic card game.
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah.
Magnus: but ah Should we start talking about specific games?
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah.
Johan: know
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah, I guess we should.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: or we should do is it like this. and First, if we have any opinions on pure city builders, let's go through them and then let's move into how city building is a mechanic in strategy games.
Andreas Eriksson: And I'm saying this because I want to say a few things, and I guess you guys also want to, or I presume you want to say a few things about deep core mechanics of a city builder.
Magnus: Great.
Andreas Eriksson: So, because this is a game genre that has everything from essentially just plopping down buildings to planning a sewer system.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: And depending on how much city building you do, I guess it triggers different sort of pleasure centers in your brain.
Andreas Eriksson: Like I'm a fan, and this is why I'm looking forward so much to Anno, the Rome version, because I'm a massive fan of just building beautiful medieval or antique cities.
Andreas Eriksson: I am not a fan of planning the road network for a metropolis.
Johan: Yeah, okay, fine. I get that. But when you sit down with a city builder as a strategy game, the road networks are kind of part of strategy. The sewer system is part of the strategy. And I know you you want to build this kind of nice villa. Fine, I get it.
Johan: But just pulling us back a bit, if we're going to talk about... kind of from my point of view, kind of the top city building strategy games, if we can put that as a genre.
Johan: I mean, we have City Skylands one and two. I mean, they are great. We have the whole Sim Cities that series up until ea came in and ruined that. And now I'm going to do the pet peeve I always do. Do not make it online.
Johan: Do not make it so you have to be online and logged in to play a game. EA, you can do better. You can and you should.
Magnus: you want I 100% sure that your pet peeve was just, don't let EA make games, because this is like the eighth time we've talked about when EA comes in takes over Game Series or Studios, and just wrecks it.
Andreas Eriksson: Okay.
Johan: yeah Yeah, I'm leaning more towards don't let EA make games other than sports game because I don't play sports games anymore after EA actually took them over. So yeah, you have a very valid point here, Magnus.
Johan: at you Yeah, but then we have Banished. We have Anno 1800. we ah We also have Farrow, a new era, which is a really good city building game. But then It's not about plopping down the beautiful houses, the mansions, making it all look nice.
Johan: It's about getting it to function. ah It's about getting a thriving city. And we have some strategy in that.
Johan: But I think that those kind of games have their own genre. They're kind of the city builder meets strategy games. Then we have city builders with a some strategy and we have strategy games with city builders and no Total War do not have city buildings.
Johan: I'm going to say that right now. If you just click and it takes four turns to build a building, no, that that's not a strategy and it's not a city You get to see it in the new games too, but still not a city builder.
Andreas Eriksson: But in the old Total War game you got to see the city and got to see the building and it was kind of pretty.
Johan: It's a strategy game with a concept of build up your cities. Sorry. No, that it's it no doesn't do it for me.
Magnus: Sidebar, but was that the most useless mechanic in a game ever in the old Road to the War game where you could zoom in and say, yes, my citizens are marching between the city gate and the arena.
Johan: Yes.
Magnus: Nothing is happening in the arena. Nothing and is happening the city gate. But I can see them walking around.
Andreas Eriksson: i I would love to know what made them include it.
Johan: know The only thing you looked at at the old Total War games and new ones are how big are my cities? How many pops do I have here that I can recruit into armies to go and kill something else?
Johan: That's the only thing you need to know. And how good units can I get?
Magnus: Yeah.
Johan: So no, not city builders.
Andreas Eriksson: Yes, I'm inclined to agree, though it bothers me a little bit because, well, they they they'd let me build cities and look at them. And I had some perverted ideas on how you can build weird cities by taking over, for example, an old Celtic settlement and popping down some Roman buildings to make it look weirder.
Andreas Eriksson: it was It was sort of fun. But yeah, that was sort of there was also very much reaching... I was a kid who did not have access to any cinematic cool city builders for a while, so I just...
Magnus: You
Magnus: yeah, well in one sentence, you've changed my mind. This was brilliant. Cause that's, I mean, that's historically interesting. Uh, I, I got it.
Andreas Eriksson: Have you seen the your sidebar again? If you have a Roman settlement and you tear down the old the the church building the temple and just pop down um either a Christian church in barbarian invasion or like a small shrine, have you seen the fact that it doesn't tear down the plaza around it?
Andreas Eriksson: So it keeps the same size of the square and just pops down one tiny building in the middle.
Johan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's horrendous.
Magnus: Good content for people who are still playing barbarian innovation.
Andreas Eriksson: As you should, since it's part of the Roam remake. Best remake.
Johan: Keep this for the Total War episode.
Magnus: i
Johan: We're going to fight about this.
Magnus: I had a very distinct feeling when I was kind of preparing for this episode ah because I had not played a lot of city builders. And my main thing was why the hell haven't I played more city builders?
Magnus: it's a fantastic It's a fantastic game concept. You just sit down, just you build your city, watch it grow, people go from here to there, you fuck something up, people i don't know they die from disease or take a load of train into the river.
Johan: Yep.
Magnus: ah It's just just so pleasing. This is an element. i mean, we've talked about this. This is one of the elements that I like within strategy gaming.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Magnus: And Usually I get mostly get annoyed when I have to like react to other people and and go and burn their cities. I just want to build my cities in peace.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Magnus: ah So <unk> I'm having a small um a minor life crisis here. Why haven't I played more city builders? It's a fantastic concept. And I do like it than pure strategy games.
Andreas Eriksson: Oh, I want to go into two of them. Never mind.
Magnus: and We're going to get back to this. yeah I i'd like it when they implement a kind of like slimmed down but smart city building concept. and I get why you don't want that in all strategy games. and I mean, basically one of the best things might be of like, yeah, just give the, give the framework and the AI or kind of pops or your citizens can deal with the rest ah and let cities evolve. And it's in the same way you let countries evolve. And I think that's maybe one of the hard things talking about city building and strategy games. Often it's where, where do you distinguish between the city building and nation building?
Johan: through True, true.
Magnus: and I think they blend together. ah But i I really like that. um And I... yeah On the other hand, i i talk in my head when you play Stellaris, where it's obviously not a city builder.
Johan: Ugh.
Magnus: and it's It's a planet builder game.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Magnus: And that's pretty much... so that's That's a base mechanic within the whole game. It almost feels like fleet battles and the like are kind of afterthoughts. They're there they're important, they decide things, but they're minor things. The key things would
Johan: um
Magnus: with with which you win the game is develop your planets and it's a very similar mechanic but i do think they they derail into okay ah so how many ah generator pods can i build on this planet it's not called a generator pod but you know what i'm talking about how many generator do i need on this generator planet how many farms can i have on this agri planet uh and
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah.
Magnus: A, it's a bad sci-fi trope that you have, like agri-planets and generator planets.
Johan: It's not a bad trope. It's a Warhammer 40k trope. You have a certain planet doing a certain thing. But yes, it's a very bad strategy planning. Yes, I agree with you there.
Magnus: Yeah, and ah I think that's a good example of where you go wrong with city planning as well, is that, okay, i if if the game leads you to build, like, okay, this is a farming settlement, I can only do farming things here.
Magnus: That's bad city building. Uh, uh, if I can only train troops here, it's a bad, it's a bad city builder. I mean, a good city builder is something where, okay, because my settlement becomes more complex, it gets better in every way.
Magnus: it It draws a larger population.
Johan: Yeah.
Magnus: it's more complex you i have more housing i have better sewage so a better sewage system that's good city building and i think that that's often hard to get into a strategy game and also it's it's one of these fantastic examples where we can say like okay this is bad city building but in the at the end of the day most of the games we will be negative about they're not city builders it' it's a strategy game where you have you're like
Johan: ye
Magnus: Where do you draw the line? How much should we go into this rabbit hole of making decent city builder within a game that's not a city builder and which people don't play for the city building? like
Johan: Yeah, I think you're onto something here. And especially I want to latch on to something you said yeah at the start. I mean, one of the most fun things I have with city builders, especially Dwarf Fortress, it's when you fuck up and you try to save it.
Johan: yeah I mean, I played a game last week of Dwarf Fortress, and I've been playing this game, this particular save for two months. Yeah. some hours every day.
Johan: And dwarves in this game, they like to have mist and steam coming up in their bars just to make them happy. And I decided that, okay, you know what? I have my bar on level three here.
Johan: If I just take this river and I get it under, i can i can fix this. I can get some steam engines and it's all going to be great. And I'm going to get even more a happy populace.
Johan: So I started digging this out. And when I, to to quote an end from Lord of the Rings, let the river run free, and I removed that, I failed to see that, yes, I have a drop here. that I had a little tile that I hadn't looked at, which flooded everything.
Johan: underneath level four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, down to 36. It just started flooding. And I had no way of just stopping this because no dwarf could go in there and fix it.
Johan: So I had to kind of rush and, okay, where can I get pumps? Where can I just block this off? Which levels are dead to me now? And I kind of fucked up my own city, but it was really fun trying to then pull myself back from the fact that I um flooded the the artisan district. i flooded the throne room. I flooded everything important.
Johan: But it was really fun because of a small single mistake I made. And I don't think we we are ever as punished in a strategy game as we are in a city builder when you do something wrong.
Johan: And it can take you weeks or years to get back from that. And I think that's part of strategy where it it's rewarding when you succeed, but it punishes you really, really hard when you just miss a title.
Andreas Eriksson: Yes, and I think it's interesting because what you're describing now is definitely a thing that would generally not show up in a strategy game. general, when you get to build a city in, for example, Cossacks or Age of Empires or...
Andreas Eriksson: Let's go with that not to go with Total War, I mean... but like any any Any game that lets you plop down things on a map, you rarely get to actually change the rest of the geography.
Johan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: And you rarely get to do these sort of minor fuck-ups where, well, undamming a river or over damming a river or something like that. That seems to be the purview almost exclusively of games that aspire to be city building first or a city building only.
Andreas Eriksson: And I think that's... I'm going to segue us a little bit into, in general, city building in the strategy games. Because in some ways I think that's a bit sad. As I've mentioned many times before, one of the things I love about, one of the things I think make the best strategy games is high level of complexity or, well, just complexity.
Johan: Hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: So just many mechanisms interacting to the point that it's really hard to figure out the game in meta or where it is possible to make mistakes, where it's possible to invent new strategies.
Andreas Eriksson: And essentially just trying to flood an enemy. or trying to use zappers to break the dam above an enemy city or something like that. I think that would be a really fun mechanic to have.
Andreas Eriksson: but i very rarely see it. how host Why is that?
Johan: Well, I think it it's a hard line to balance. I think either you have a good war-focused strategy game or you have a Cerebillard game. It's kind of a hard to to get those two united.
Johan: And here, yes
Johan: The best examples I get when you want to flood someone, you want to undermine the walls, or you want to use zappers in a way. We have Castles.
Johan: it's It's a great game. It's an old game. but all Strongholds was the name of the game.
Andreas Eriksson: Yes.
Johan: They were really good at that, but that's a siege. And then in some incline, Total War... medieval one and two did this in a good way.
Johan: Because you were fighting in cities, you could undermine, you could sap, you you could do those things. But it's a hard thing when when you've built up a city to translate that to you now have to defend the city or you have to take the city.
Johan: I think it's a conceptual Not an error, but it's conceptually hard to bridge the gap between a true city builder and true strategy game.
Johan: But I might be wrong here.
Magnus: No, but I think you're right because of things about this. I've already mentioned Warrior King's battles ah once this part once this episode. And there you have the problem that, as you said, it's it's a strategy game that wants to be a city builder, which gets really annoying because it's like, okay, precisely where I put my smithy on the map maybe shouldn't have a huge impact on whether I win the battle or not.
Andreas Eriksson: Oh, yes.
Johan: Yeah, yeah.
Johan: yeah
Magnus: In a strategy game, maybe the important thing, okay, I have a smithy.
Johan: ye
Magnus: i have I have a farm, I have a smithies, i I produce the resources which I then need to train my troops so and let it go out and win the battles. And it's it's an old game, but you have the mechanic there where, yeah, you have to build your smithy, you have to build your farms, you have to build the carts to transport things, and if you if you fuck up your your city planning at the start of the map, that could really impact how many units you can get out.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Magnus: And I think that's when you you take a bit too much of a dive into a city builder in a strategy game. And you rarely see that these days. so ah it
Andreas Eriksson: i was goingnna I was going to counterpoint because I think the city building in Wario King Battles is one of my favorites it's I don't think it's the smithy I think it's the warehouse or the storehouse that's the really tricky one because that's where they dump resources and that's where ah carts hand over resources to your city if you don't want them to drive all the way to your manor But what what the game does essentially is ah with the city building and the trying to impact the rest of the game is I think three things. First of all, farms and some religious buildings or other mills and religious buildings. If they are built close enough to farms or where people are working, they boost the efficiency of those workers. I love it. I love actually having to think about where plop down my farms.
Andreas Eriksson: And second of all, that game loves its supply lines. So if you build a straight road, rather you don't really build a road, but if yeah like you plan for a straight way between your farms or your lumber mills and villages and your manor, you get things delivered quicker.
Andreas Eriksson: And if you can hold the time of delivery, you can essentially boom way faster early on. so But this leads me into something which I think is... prevalent in almost all the strategy games which lets you build a part of your city, which is... it's actually there physically in the game, which means two things. First of all, in the true spirit of banished and similar city builders,
Andreas Eriksson: If you build a complicated city with many small routes not really connecting well, where for with which forces people to walk fun the funland little circuits or walkabouts around the city rather than just a straight line to where they're working, you get resources way slower.
Johan: Thank
Andreas Eriksson: i know in Age of Empires 2 there is even a game meta that wants, I think it's once you are free tiles between your lumber lumberer mill or lumberjack whatever and the tree line, you need to tear it down and build a new one.
Andreas Eriksson: Because that's when you lose more wood on walking than you lose from building the new one. Which is ah is a weird thing, but but but it's kind of fun.
Andreas Eriksson: so so first of all, you the way you build your city to impacts how fast you get resources. And the other one is maybe even more important. The way you build a city, you whichever mechanics you have access to.
Andreas Eriksson: impacts how the game looks and also does how the battlefield looks. There is an entire sub-genre of games, tower defense, which is essentially just building a city so that it's really hard and annoying for enemies to walk in it.
Andreas Eriksson: Opinions.
Magnus: I think that's an extremely interesting description of a tower defense game.
Andreas Eriksson: A tower defense game is essentially...
Magnus: Not building a city on the desk, you're building towers.
Andreas Eriksson: ah
Magnus: yeah
Andreas Eriksson: I mean, the tower defense game is essentially someone in, i think, Warcraft 3 discovering the idea that if I build my city annoying enough to walk through, it's really hard for enemies to actually attack me................
Magnus: You won't.
Johan: Yeah, but I mean, here's kind of the difference. what What you're describing here is the strategy game being in the city builder, but kind of the battles being tactics, a tactics game.
Johan: and And I, for one, loathe game that does this thing with, oh, you lost your smithy.
Johan: You can no longer get out swordsman. or you can no longer get these out when when you're fighting for the city. ah Because, no, you lost that.
Johan: Yeah, but I mean, they've been producing for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven years. I should have a stockpile of this. And I think we we have something something that is the mix.
Magnus: Thank you.
Johan: And I think this is where we're going to end. end up, i'm I'm not sure, but I think this is where we're going to end up. If you have a city builder as the strategy game, the combat will be a tactics game.
Johan: If you have a strategy game with city a building, the city building will become a tactics or tower defense game or something like that. um But I don't know really how to fix that. We have some games that try to incorporate it but I don't feel they do that very well.
Andreas Eriksson: First of all, I presume they just keep all the equipment in the smithy so when it's taken over or destroyed, they're destroyed with it. I'm gonna have to defend it.
Johan: You have warehouses. You have warehouses.
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah, but um but but since Cossacks is one of my favorite game series, I'm gonna have to defend it. Because there are some points to it which I like. yeah First, more than anything else, it's just that makes raiding meaningful.
Andreas Eriksson: taking out civilian buildings lets you screw over the entire military or the military economy, which I like.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: Yes. I was going to segue a little bit. ah Not really a segue, I guess, but there is something that is very interesting, I think, in reality, which is how you build a castle.
Andreas Eriksson: So this is something I have done some deep dives into because I'm a geek. Like, just just revisit the maps episode and you you realize how much I just love watching various documentaries on how things worked in the Middle Ages and stuff like that.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: But essentially, the entire idea ah behind building most castles was essentially make your own geography and make it annoying for enemies. And this was not always convenient.
Andreas Eriksson: So some of the most defensible medieval castles in Europe have ah really a fun problem, which is that carts could essentially ah create really bad road accidents or um traffic yeah congestion because you built the the pathways through the city walls very narrow.
Andreas Eriksson: in order for enemies not to be able to force ah through them in order to for you to be able to build sturdy doors, but also just once they're broken through, they can't really funnel a large amount of troops through.
Johan: Mhm. Mhm.
Andreas Eriksson: Which also meant that you could generally like drive one cart in in between or something like that, and if the wheels broke down, you had a problem.
Johan: Mhm.
Andreas Eriksson: and this is something I think, yeah um harking back to what I said earlier, I think this is something that actually city building in a lot of RTSs actually captures.
Andreas Eriksson: Build your city mess enough and it's going to be hard for enemies to walk through it. And it's also going to fuck over your economy entirely. I like it. I like playing for that. But I do like it more when the game forces you to take yeah into consideration both of them.
Johan: you
Andreas Eriksson: Otherwise I feel that, so for example, Age of Empires, it easily gets into one of these games where, well, I have my resource production over there. It's nice straight lines. Everything is close to the to the resources.
Andreas Eriksson: And then I have a city over here where I just plot houses down in a way that breaks formations. just make it annoying for enemies to walk through and they let me have my British Longbowman standing far back and has fire on everything for a long time.
Andreas Eriksson: Which is the bad way to do it, I guess.
Magnus: Yeah, I just wanted to drop a historical nugget. that I learned this week that there's a theory that the capital of ancient Assyria, Asher, actually fell because they hadn't taken this in account. was like, it was a flashy thing to build huge city gates and decorated city gates.
Magnus: And then the empire fell in a... ah the empire started declining. And one of the reasons why the capital fell is that basically they had 18 gates and the city wasn't defensible.
Andreas Eriksson: Oh my God.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Magnus: So I'll just drop that historical nugget in.
Andreas Eriksson: I want to add another one. So I read a book recently about to political planning. It's mostly about agriculture, but it also dives into city building a little bit.
Andreas Eriksson: What I noticed that ah sometime after the French Revolution, we started building cities with way broader streets around the House of Parliament or the Houses of Government.
Andreas Eriksson: so that rebels couldn't form pickets and shut down the street with barricades, so that you would be able to march your army back to the capital and back to ah the seat of government and in case of essentially the city population revolting.
Magnus: specifically in in Paris, and that's one of the reasons why they have boulevards in Paris. I think we've got him way off city buildings. Sorry. my My bad. You won. but
Johan: Now, I kind of want to bridge on to this thing you've been talking about, but mainly I want to have something that vexes me and makes me quite angry and when I do city building in medieval times, medieval city buildings or ancient city buildings.
Johan: And it kind of latches on what you say about ah but not being historically correct. We've played a lot of medieval Total War 2.
Johan: yeah We've played a lot of Rome 1 and Rome 2. We've stormed cities. We've used. We've attacked cities.
Johan: There is something here. Which kind of vexes me. Enormously is. Moats. Are extremely. Extremely useful.
Johan: You build a moat around your castle. Why? Because you won't have storm ladders coming up. You won't have siege towers coming up. But we kind of miss this thing because we want this cinematic grand gesture of, oh, let's fight on the walls.
Johan: You do not want people fighting on your walls. You do everything to prevent that. You want them to come from one or two gates. Or in the Assyrian way, ah you want them to come from 18 gates and you get fucked for it.
Johan: But moats are not a part of... city builders in the ancient times or city builders up until the 16th, 17th century.
Johan: Just to see that. and i think And I think that some games kind of miss out on this because it robs you of an element of strategy.
Johan: It robs you of an element of where can I attack? Nowhere, I can only attack here. Yes, that's the point of a city. I want you to just be able to attack here.
Magnus: Shout out to historian role, Kahnine and Dyke, on YouTube, who has, like, two videos just about this, going through Hollywood films, like, where's the ditch? Where is the ditch? Just think a ditch!
Magnus: but
Johan: Yeah, kick story, pull them.
Magnus: This was basically the game, the game equivalent of that rant. Where is the ditch?
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah, Spades, the great leveler.
Magnus: um
Johan: Yeah.
Magnus: Yeah, it's the great leopard. Good joke. yeah ah i I'm getting really... i I really want to play a good modern tower defense game, but it's just a castle.
Andreas Eriksson: Yes.
Magnus: That's what this conversation gets me revved up for, just playing a tower defense game, which is basically just build a castle and try to keep it.
Johan: Yeah, yeah.
Magnus: um Pulling us back to City Builder's larger, I think we talked about in in the maps episode ah about it it kind of touches on what we said about terrain there and how i it bugs me when You had like, yeah, this hill has iron and therefore your settlement will produce good swordsmen or where, you know, kind of like the development geographically is too tied into what's on the map because historically we don't work like that.
Johan: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Magnus: I mean, take a Syria, for example, of Southern Iraq, which has been hugely, uh, rich and wealthy throughout most of history. Uh, and it's very resource rich, uh, resource poor apart from like, there's very good arable land.
Magnus: There's good farming in Southern Iraq or historically there was, uh, But they built empires out of that, even though they don't have an access to iron and metal. um We talked about this, or we said that we would talk about, do we like that when it's like, if we don't have city building, is it okay for to just be, yeah, click on the settlement and build stuff in with buttons?
Johan: And she did you.
Magnus: Andreas, I think you have opinions on this.
Andreas Eriksson: Oh, yes. This is this is actually... I i was going to segue this, but but you almost made the point for me. So one thing... I love in strategy games is having choices and directional choices.
Andreas Eriksson: For example, do this rather than that and stuff like that. This is sort of that and sort of not that. so to To some extent in in a lot of games, like if your city has these resources, you're essentially forced to mine them.
Andreas Eriksson: And that's what this city is going to be about. ah But there is also the other way around where Old Game lets you just do whatever and just build the city larger and larger and just smack in every building producing everything, which is also annoying.
Andreas Eriksson: I think my my favorite is the in-betweener where your city can do anything. It can do some things better than other things, ah but you have a limited space.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: So essentially, if you try to make an everything city, like the like massive metropolis, it's not going to work.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: It's going to be terrible. But if you want to specialize, for example, but towards trade or towards manufacturing or something like that, you shouldn't be held back by the fact that you don't have the specific resource.
Andreas Eriksson: As long as have it in your empire. This is, if you look at the ancient empires and the olden kingdoms, this is is still what they sort of did.
Johan: you
Andreas Eriksson: Once you had a good, nice, defensible city, which also belonged to someone who had the done a bunch of conquering, you did actually ship things there. But I guess what I'm saying is that I love it when you you have a city building element that has an impact on your resources, but it but the impact is done through the choices you make, through what sort of industry you choose to develop, rather than just by, oh nice, I managed to capture the grain basket of wherever.
Johan: But but then then again, capturing the grain basket was was a huge part of the ancient warfare. But yeah I i time kind of tend to agree with you because we have, just looking at the trade system, we have and the Total War games, and it specifically Total War Warhammer 1, 2, and 3, where where If I capture this settlement, I will get marble, I will get grains, I will get gold, I will get something.
Johan: And my whole empire will benefit from this. ah And I think that's kind of a good mechanic because it not all cities have gold, marble, oxen or whatever it is, which makes smaller settlements or bigger settlements viable as your first target because i kind of need this. I need wine. I need beer. I need whatever it is.
Johan: And it makes them strategically valuable.
Andreas Eriksson: I just love the fact that we essentially pitched the point of make war because you need wine and beer.
Magnus: ah
Johan: yeah
Magnus: I really disagree, Yohan. And I was thinking about that when you said, because sunday I mean, the dream is kind of like you can build everything in your city, but you're constrained. I mean, you're constrained by the sites of the city, by the population of the city.
Magnus: ah And you have to think about where you get the resources from. ah i e there's there's some kind of trading system. Yeah, it's going to be hard to get marble in the in north of Europe. ah or That's a really bad example because you have a lot of marble right where I live.
Magnus: ah But you might you know be in a reason where marble will be costly because you'll have to trade it in from half a continent away. And that should have some kind of impact on your city. I hate it specifically in the Total War series. I think the the most stupid example is in Attila, which is, I think, the best Total War game.
Magnus: But there's such a stupid thing that you can't build cathedrals as the Western Roman Empire if you lose the Southeast of England. like lead's been traded for thousands of years yes i may have lost the region but lead will still be traded i don't need to physically control the lead mine to get the lead as long as you don't fall into that trap i'm fine with just let it be traded it still should be kind of like ready as ready available to everyone on the map but there will be a trade system
Johan: um
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah, I'm going to sneak something in. I know Johan wants to to say something, but but yes, I agree.
Johan: I have a lot to say.
Andreas Eriksson: one of the One of the things that bothers me a lot so with strategy games, and this is just because, as I've said many times, I work in politics, a lot of strategy games try to force you towards communism.
Johan: No.
Andreas Eriksson: More or less, or it rather it wants to force you towards a planned economy.
Johan: No, they don't. No, they don't. What are you playing?
Andreas Eriksson: It wants to force you towards a planned economy. That is sam that is if you don't have if you can't make everything by yourself, it essentially disappears. Whereas in reality, if for example, this is a thing that happened during the mercantilist age,
Andreas Eriksson: a period in history when a lot of countries tried to essentially gather the most gold. It was a really weird um economic policy, but it was really popular. And if you look at America today, it's apparently resurgent.
Andreas Eriksson: But ah problem that happened a lot was that ah countries tried to trade embargo each other. Like, we're not going to export this unless you pay what we want. So we're going to stop it altogether. So you can't have it and you can do X, Y, and And what essentially happened was that yes the smuggling became massive.
Andreas Eriksson: I guess this is something that could be interesting in a strategy game, like having a reduced or increased price of a resource which you can't access yourself.
Andreas Eriksson: But at that point, you are also making a trading game. this is I haven't played it yet, but this is what I've heard about Europa Universalis 5, that they are dabbling in that territory.
Andreas Eriksson: It's going to be really exciting to look at all the numbers.
Johan: Yeah, all all the numbers is going to be... yeah I mean, that game I look ah look really forward to. ah Just to clarify, up yeah I understand I didn't do this very well.
Johan: But Total War, Warhammer 1, 2, and 3. Yes, if you have marble, you can trade marble, but you still get marble if you have a trade agreement with someone else who has marble. Yes, of course, I just should it should have been clearer there.
Johan: I wasn't. and um I'm not agreeing, as you might have heard, that we have planned economy games. ah No.
Johan: Or I'm questioning what kind of game Andreas plays. But yeah I mean, still love you. You're you still wonderful person, but you're in the wrong here.
Johan: ah But i I can agree with Magnus for like Rome or medieval or those kind of games. Attila, it it is a good Total War game. It's not the best.
Johan: that It's good. It has some t twinks to work out. But if you don't have marble, yes, you will find marble to trade, but then you have to build up your harbors or your trading network or something like that to get it.
Johan: um So in ah in a sense, I kind of explained it wrong. I wasn't wrong there. But when you do yourself have marble, that's strategically viable because you can make a lot more money from it.
Johan: that That was kind of the point I wanted to get through.
Magnus: i We have a fantastic heading in our notes for this this episode, which I think is a good thing to end on.
Johan: Yeah.
Magnus: I'm sorry if I'm taking over your job here, Andreas, but and city building in strategy games. Do we want it?
Andreas Eriksson: Yes.
Johan: Yes.
Magnus: Yes. Okay.
Andreas Eriksson: But this is a really complicated question.
Johan: Yes.
Magnus: yeah Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.
Andreas Eriksson: i want i want to put in here because this is a really complicated question. i am probably the the ah person is in this pod who likes RTSs the most. And the in most RTS games, city building is essential to some extent.
Andreas Eriksson: Because but essentially what the most of the RTS is, is you build your base and you have your army. Those are the two things that interact. Your army fucks up their base, their army fucks up your base, you build up your base, you defend your... essentially.
Andreas Eriksson: So this is sort of the core back and forth in most RTSs. And in those games, I guess you want some city buildings, but it can still exist on a scale. Like, for example, the amount of city building you do in StarCraft is essentially trying to optimize the... Like, where do your troops mass and what level of defenses and troops do the enemy have to walk through before they reach your resource production?
Andreas Eriksson: And of course, you do outposts, you just do an outpost and let them destroy it and then remake it. Sort of similar to how what I talked about in Age of Empire, where whenever you have a shop down three lines of trees, you build a new lumber camp.
Andreas Eriksson: And then three lines of trees, a new lumber camp.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: And at that point, it it might just be a little bit of busy work. And then you have other games, for example, like Cossacks, where some buildings are destructible, some are capturable, some are not.
Andreas Eriksson: ah Walls are really sturdy, you can't just go and hit them with your sword until they start burning. And all of a sudden, city building becomes part of shaping the battlefield in the RTS, yeah and that's a major bonus.
Andreas Eriksson: But that's for RTSs.
Johan: Mm-hmm.
Andreas Eriksson: I think an RTS which is just a Battlefield is viable. i think Steel Division is one of those games. But one of the reasons I like RTSs which are not just Battlefield games is because you can start ah to impact the Battlefield yourself.
Andreas Eriksson: But when you move on to grand strategy, things get a lot a lot different. For example, in European Universalis, you essentially just click a province and try to choose which economy is going to happen inside of it, and that's the city-building element.
Andreas Eriksson: In a lot of those games, I guess I don't think it is as necessary.
Andreas Eriksson: But in in our case, I would be sad without it.
Johan: Not
Johan: Yep, yeah but just even though it's on the shallow end and on the top of the surf, you still want it. You kind of still want it.
Johan: and And I mean, I love city building. I love strategy games. and But also it depends on game. if If I want to do a quick paced game, do I want city building?
Johan: No, probably not. But in a grand strategy game or a strategy game, Yeah, I love me some city building. Just bring it on, man. I love it. let let Let me optimize my city to optimize my strategy.
Johan: I mean, I love it. too
Magnus: aren't we heading towards kind of like the, the boring answer and also one of the cliches, which we've already talked about on this podcast. and The obvious answer is, yeah, give some city building if it's right for the game.
Johan: Yeah, and make it good.
Magnus: and Because i think you're, you're
Andreas Eriksson: Yeah, okay, let's let's ruin that response, because I think we're going to head there, yes. But let's just toss in the fact that, as a player, do you want to engage in the city building when you could be spending your time on the battlefield?
Andreas Eriksson: Let's just presume that we are in an RTS for a moment.
Johan: Yes.
Andreas Eriksson: If you have choose between being in a battlefield or building buildings, where do you have the most fun and where would you want to Do you want to take a break from the battlefield, just sit back to your town to build new buildings or not?
Johan: Yes, I would.
Andreas Eriksson: Because I'm not entirely sure I like that, but looking at the trajectory of new strategy games, very few RTSs actually keeps the base building components to ah to a large extent.
Johan: Why should one mean that I can't do the other? I want both of them. ah I want city building and I want the battle, which is kind of why I think we three like strategy games because battles, yes, important, really important. We've been over this, but you don't have battles all the time.
Johan: yeah You have some time to check the map, to check your city. I want both of them if they are well executed. That's my kind of ending word in this.
Magnus: What I really hate is when i to win, I need to focus on the battlefield. But no, I have to take a break because something has gone to hell within my production.
Johan: Yeah.
Magnus: And I'm sorry. I know I should be checking this division or this this unit or this guy over there on the map. But sorry, the smithy is too far away from the warehouse and I need to fix this.
Magnus: I think that's the nightmare.
Johan: Yeah. Hard point.
Magnus: i would say It pushes you to do city building when you really can't afford to do city building.
Johan: Hard point.
Andreas Eriksson: One of the major things that marked me becoming an adult when playing games rather than a child was the point when I actually did the math in Age of Empires and realized that, okay, so a barracks cost me like 175 wood. That is nothing.
Andreas Eriksson: ah is nothing
Andreas Eriksson: so if i just spam out a lot of barracks in order to get my troops out because like two barracks half the time to produce the same amount of one does free and and it just keeps scaling like that it's it's ah very basic um
Johan: Yeah.
Andreas Eriksson: the The moment I realized that, oh shit, I've been doing the numbers wrong. I've been thinking of it as hard to build a big building because it's big yeah and easy to train troops because they're small.
Andreas Eriksson: But most of the troops I train are actually more expensive than the building. And when I realized that, then I had this aha moment. Oh, I'm just going to spam a military building right next to the enemy to get rid of production time and get rid of the time it takes for my army to walk.
Andreas Eriksson: Because as many chatish children, i I learned playing strategy the game essentially by watching what the AI did and do the same thing, but better. the moment I realized that this is just stupid. i can just break sword of the pretty city buildings, tight bases thingy, and just spam up a military encampment outside of the enemy cities.
Andreas Eriksson: That's when I developed into a grown-up strategy gamer.
Johan: Can
Johan: I just ask you very question? City builders, are they strategy games? ask you to ah very very simple question strategy games sorry sitbiddlers all they strategy games
Andreas Eriksson: Ah, I hate it, but I'm gonna maintain what I said in the beginning as long as they have conflict.
Johan: Okay, Magnus.
Magnus: I thought we did this at the beginning of the episode.
Andreas Eriksson: yeah and I'm scared that Johan is leading us towards something.
Magnus: I'm going to say no. It's a clean city builder. It's not a strategy game. Otherwise, we will end up calling everything a strategy game. um But I do think that a lot of fun strategy games have city building.
Magnus: I think the main takeaway, if you like that element of strategy gaming, might be precisely my takeaway from the beginning of the episode. Maybe incorporate some more just clean, straight out, 100% city builder games.
Magnus: And then you might not miss it so much when the developer decided not to include it in a strategy game.
Johan: Well, and there you have it. We are in agreement from what we said from the start. I wasn't trying to lead you into anything. I just wanted to see if you changed your mind. And i think on that bombshell, it is time to end this episode. We might get back to City Builders. We might get back to Strider Games with City Builders. But I'm happy to have had this chat with you.
Johan: And I hope You guys enjoyed listening to this. And if you have any pointers, just drop us a comment on Instagram or on Twitter. I refuse to call it X, but on Twitter. and we'll see what else we can talk about ah further along the line.
Magnus: If you agree with Andreas that strategy games lead you into communism, comment on Twitter.
Johan: Thank you, guys.
Johan: Yeah. Does Andreas have a point?
