Although the prices have been amped up this map for towns in my opinion there are still far too many towns. Me and @HolyRane were talking the other day and were just talking about how if you wanted to make a hamlet there was no effort involved. All you have to do is grab a couple of friends and go mining for a day and you have it. There's almost no work involved.
Say a hamlet costs 5c, a town 20c, city 40c, and a capital 80c. Change the prices to hamlet 35c, town 10c, city 30c and capital 70c. You have the same amount of work involved to work your way up to capital but now you actually have to put a lot of effort into getting your first region down. Note that these prices are in no way meant to be to scale to anything. Just an example.
I think that this will efficiently limit the number of hamlets formed. If people have a high cost for their first region it will discourage every little tiny group to start their own hamlets and they can then join existing ones to form stronger communities.
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My idea is to make the costs of getting your region down (hamlet) higher than most if not all of the upgrades after it. This way the most work will have to be put into getting your first region down. This will limit the numbers of towns that will form and will ensure only stronger towns even make it to their first region.Say a hamlet costs 5c, a town 20c, city 40c, and a capital 80c. Change the prices to hamlet 35c, town 10c, city 30c and capital 70c. You have the same amount of work involved to work your way up to capital but now you actually have to put a lot of effort into getting your first region down. Note that these prices are in no way meant to be to scale to anything. Just an example.
I think that this will efficiently limit the number of hamlets formed. If people have a high cost for their first region it will discourage every little tiny group to start their own hamlets and they can then join existing ones to form stronger communities.
Hear hear!
I'm going to toss some example costs out here:
The total for making a Capital is 75k with 50 signatures.
- found a Hamlet- 25k, +10 signatures
- upgrade to Town- 10k, +5 signatures
- upgrade to City- 15k, +10 signatures
- upgrade to Capital- 25k, +15 signatures
Currently (if the wiki is to be believed) it costs 142.5k and 25 signatures to be considered a Capital. So it's more people-dependent which IMO is how it should be, and 50 signatures is fairly achievable. Lorien did it for a while there, no? Could also simply bump up the coin if 75k is too easy.
If we assume that a higher entry point for making a Hamlet would reduce the number of towns made by 25%, working off our current number of settlements that's about 12 towns fewer. If it takes 10 signatures to make a Hamlet we have a minimum of 120 more people to be distributed between the other towns, and still working off our current situation that's about 3 more signatures per remaining town.