Town Growth?

So a player guild petitions to start a new village. Over time it gets a lot a lot of traffic and becomes a trading hub in the region. More and more people want to set up shop or move there but it's too small.

A very possible scenario which begs the question: Will towns be allowed to expand? Should they? Should they be upgradable and should they be able to degrade?

If they can grow, can they be upgraded with shields?

Players are eventually going to be asking this, especially with the limited real estate available. If the dev team is willing to establish new towns then will what happens if the town's needs change?

 

Maybe there is only two stages of city ?
One being the village, the other being the town, a larger, more developped villlage ?

Nevertheless, I am curious as well, regarding this issue.

 

I like the concept of village -> town, but what happens when the upgrade takes place? Where do the existing buildings get moved to? Do all houses need to be replaced in a new "town" lot after the upgrade has taken place?

 

Maybe there is just one or two new streets added around the existing grid. And then the city walls are pushed a little further away.

 

yeah it would have to be something like that. They would have to design a town map to be updatable/expandable. So they trigger an update and new streets are simply added with whatever buildings and lots are appropriate.

 

Camp > Village > Small Town > Large Town. With requirements for growth. EG: waterworks, farms, bakery, dairy, mining, blacksmith, military etc Map refreshes as you explore / re explore. Would be a good idea.

 

Maybe they could only grow to one level higher?

 

I was thinking they could only grow larger. If for whatever reason the population were to drop, then parts of the town would get abandoned and either fall into decay like a ghost town or have lots become emptied.

Though one mechanism I just now thought of for a town to actually shrink might be for it to come under seige. With a dwindling population a town would become vulnerable to attack (because it'd be harder to defend a large area with fewer people). The seige would damage more buildings on the outskirts and there you go.. smaller town.

The problem with this approach is it would require all player owned lots to remain within the confines of the original town. Meaning if the town ever grew it would only get new NPC buildings. So.. hmm well I thought it was a clever idea but I guess not so much. Not unless the game could somehow move player buildings around after the seige.