I loved this idea too. Industrial settlements could get a lot of trade agreements from other city and also make it a commercial settlement. Militaristic settlements could be aggressive and attack settlements with a high commercial and industrial score to support their armies. Religious settlements could attack settlements with low religion score and high science score and make it more religious. Stuff like that. Sounds awesome!
Don't forget forms of government too. Monarchism, democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy, anarchism, etc.
By the way, will we have strategic options when it comes to rivers? Like using archers to attack from one side to the opposite side.
Exactly what you said in the first paragraph is what I'm after
. Cities will declare war based on species, gaining resources, gaining land, whatever. Different governmental system - some will be more suited to particular species, but it will otherwise be relatively random which each city/civilization ends up with (though there should be ways to subvert that system...). Oh, yes - when a battle starts, you can lay out your troops, and as a basic tactic, sticking your archers on one side of a river is a great way to protect them and let them deal damage freely. Hills also offer obvious advantages! Depending on the size of your force, how effective a commander you are, whether you're taken by surprise or not, etc, you have a certain period of time to tell your forces where to deploy to at the start of a battle. Similarly, once in battle, you can give orders to your archers to stay safe (though they will probably do that of their own accord, too).
On this i guess there is a need for abstraction, else all the different kinds of social structures would need a lot of planning, analyzing and coding.
Consider this; A commercial settlement depends on other settlements to develop, thus the other settlements need to be generated first as the C.Set would probably be developed on a crossroads between other cities that do trade and have desirable resources.
Basically, unless abstracted, every city would need to examine the available resources, such as minerals, fertile ground, forests, strategical value.
How did it develop? Serfdom, slavery, freemen? Mercantile or free trade?
Hmmm. I see what you mean. I'm not sure how resources are going to work yet; I don't want anything AoE-esque, where you need to (or need to be in a city that does it for you) gather wood, iron, etc - but at the same time, there obviously needs to be a limit on the amount of tempered steel you can make weapons from. I suspect I will end up deploying a resources system, but one that is primarily under-the-hood, and the player only has interaction at the 'output' end - setting mining priorities, etc. But I think cities will appear in locations that are good in terms of rivers, food, etc, and then they will *develop* according to the military etc resources nearby.
Depending on URR's take on gods(divine dictating vs clergy politics), unless a theocracy wishes to expand and conquer, they rarely engage in hostile activities unless theres unrest at home. Whats better than a holy war for eternal glory to help those pesky plebs forget about the high taxes?
And i assume that this is a standard fantasy world, meaning that a science attribute is rather mislabeling. Technological advance would be to have sewers, aquaducts, irrigation and such things, rather than the Christianity vs free thinkers that you seem to envision.
URR, If you have time and interest, i suggest reading Malazan books of the fallen series by Stephen erikson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Erikson
Its a good source for ideas.
Yeah - while I do intend to include gods, I'm not sure how they'll connect to cities yet. We'll have to see. As you say, technology is more 'development' than 'science', but I don't want a totally static/uchronian fantasy world either. I have heard of those, actually - I'll let you know if I find time to give them a look
! I probably read about a book a week (either fiction/non), but I've already got a gigantic backlog of books on my shelves as it is
In the mean time, I'm building up to a big screenshot update on the 26th; will include currents in rivers, and forests, and all kinds of stuff not shown in the
http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2011/12/19/the-case-of-the-penrose-river-2/ screenshot!