All these hard questions!
Do we start with any buildings in our towns?
How would a teleport network improve the adventurers city-visiting?
Can civs with advanced structures use them to help the others? (IE, the first player to get a research lab building teleporters at every capital).
If we have a network of supply lines, do we have instant trades with allies, and can we help each other with sudden crises as easily as we could our own towns?
Do we need a Shrine to Armok for our capital?
* Your town starts with a Shrine to Armok and 250 housing, plus the Town upgrade.
* Since the adventurers are basically going to be teleporting to their mission sites, it won't help with that... but it would make commercial goods more widely available. For instance, you don't need the whole group to go to a small town with adamantine and nothing else of note if it's linked with another city. (that's true of supply lines too, but teleporters don't require troops or food exependiture)
* I'll make a new rule that you can send labourers to another civ and build stuff for them, but the locals can't help if they're of a different race. And you still can't break the One Project Per Location At A Time limit. (any other way of doing this would give the GM a huge headache)
* Yes, you can trade resources to other players freely using supply lines.
* As said above, you all already have a Shrine to Armok. You'll only need to build a new one if you are in a situation where your wealth is stored in two places (a second Town for instance)
Things to clarify before I make a move: First off, what's the rules on trading food/wealth/resources? Obviously right now we would need to send a party to carry everything, but once we have roads and vehicles and harbors and things how would that change?
Addendum: can we "borrow" population like laborers from other groups, or at least have them build something in our city with their speed and cost boosts?
Can my gatherers carry stuff as well as gather new stuff while moving to a new settlement?
Also: do we have to maintain population levels for towns and cities?
And what about population growth?
* Roads/Harbours/etc. won't facilitate trade between players per say, they'll just make it easier for you to send groups of people with supplies. Supply lines, on the other hand, allow instantaneous trading. (obviously I'm not going to let other players decide they're taking your stuff against your will, you'll all need to mediate your own trade agreements)
* (see above) I'll make a new rule that you can send labourers to someone else's town and build stuff for them, but the local labourers can't contribute CP if they're of a different race.
* Yes, Gatherers can gather while moving, but only the "not stationed at a settlement" amount, and only from the tile they're in, not the adjacent ones.
* Good point. I'll add a rule about maintaining Town and City status. (obviously if you move some pop out and then back in later, it goes right back to being a Town, you won't need to redo the costly Town Upgrade)
* ...What
about population growth? If I understand the question, no, you don't need to maintain a certain rate of pop growth. If you want to horde your wealth for Lucky Chance, go for it.
As an aside, I don't know how many of you have read much about the Underdark, but it's much more constricted than aboveground. Everything is either tunnels, or solid rock. You know how the underground caverns work in Dwarf Fortress? Imagine if all the caverns were about a fifth as wide, and the monsters were more aggressive, and there were Always-Hostile Underground Super Elves, and a bunch of the random monsters like Troglodytes and Batmans have formed cultures, and none of the Forgotten Beasts are made of something stupid and flimsy like powder snow or water. (luckily, none of them give off clouds of Screw Your Fort every couple seconds, either)
being a nice player, I'd rather hash out early than rules lawyer later.
Good attitude.
Ideally the system would just be perfectly clear from the get-go, but... well, I couldn't think of another game system that really emulates what I needed this civ game to do. It's not like Settlers of Catan has allowance for a bunch of adventurers occasionally taking things over. So I basically threw it together by myself. In Notepad++. It'd be completely unrealistic to assume I'd make something perfect in those circumstances, so... gotta keep ironing out them kinks.
I'll make all of the following changes to the OP as well.
Rules Edit/clarification:Gatherers will harvest from the four adjacent tiles while housed in a settlement. Gatherers that are stationed in the wilderness, or who exceed their location's housing limit, gather only from the tile they're stationed in, at the "not stationed in a settlement" rate.
Rules Edit/Clarification:Each 1,000 wealth takes up the same space as 1 Food or Materials, in terms of population's carrying capacity.
New Rule:Towns must maintain a population of 150 to continue producing wealth. Cities must maintain a population of 450, or are considered Towns for wealth production. If a location falls below these thresholds, the benefits are regained immediately when the population increases again (i.e. you don't need to repurchase the Town Upgrade).
New Rule:If a location's pop exceeds its housing, the excess are considered stationed there, but are not considered part of the town's pop, and don't receive the benefits of being in a town. The player will need to decide what distribution of labour to put in the housing. Gatherers gather a reduced amount and only from the tile they're in, and crafters cannot produce wealth. Labourers may still contribute to construction efforts. Pop exceeding a locations housing limit cannot benefit from City Defenses, and attacks against them will be a Raid.
New rule:Pop stationed in another player's city behave slightly differently than usual. Gatherers will add resources to their own inventory before the city's, but can gather from adjacent tiles as if they were in their own city (assuming there is sufficient housing for them). Construction projects can only be worked on by labourers of the race that started the project (for example, Dwarves can build an Underground Access in a Human Town for them, but the Human labourers cannot help with the construction).
New rule:When more than one player's Soldiers are involved in a battle, each soldier uses the CR Per Soldier of their home civilization (but can benefit from another player's structure bonuses while abroad).