[Brainstorming] Politics for players with single town

Second + towns provide a lot of advantages in adventure category ... additional puzzles, chests, etc. and additional chances to gain level i.e. monsters. Mountain and water resources (including abilities to build additional buildings)will not be available. Research would be slow due to lack of research buildings. How would you overcome these factors?

You might want to ask how many are playing with a single town by choice rather than because they are hemmed in or have been forcibly shrunk? 

Also, secondary towns help in leveling up if a player is not an attacker (and by the looks of it will have a higher attack penalty rendering this option unattractive) or is not attacked enough to make a difference (which is the likely result of having a higher defensive bonus).  I recognize there are quests and caves to provide experience points but the secondary town mobs can be quite instrumental in getting the necessary points to reach the next hero level.  How will these heroes be competitive in terms of reaching higher hero levels?

To be honest, i'm not quite sure i would ever play with just one town, as it limits every single aspect in the game. and every means EVERY one. Less total culture, troops, science income, resource income, less random puzzles, no monsters at all, thus no "passive" experience (and with attack penalty on top... bye bye hero perks...), less digging sites, thus indirectly less equipment, less random visitors, and no animals, and all that without even needing to think about more complicated things. 

If you really add a "single town" policy, the bonuses have to be brutal to overcome all of the downsides, and you really need to add random events to the main dwelling (such as animals and food for them).

I'm not quite sure that this policy will suit any kind of player, as i suppose story will have battles, as in New Kyiv, and you need troops to continue with it, and i think every other victory has its main objective limited by the lack of more towns.

All in all, this seems like a policy i would use if I was almost destroyed by another player and my only chance is to buff a single city in order to save it. There is not much more point to it, as sticking to the main dwelling makes you lose a good part of the game. 

Now the real brainstorm :P, If you want to make this policy remotely useful the bonuses can't be fixed, they should scale depending on different factors (per example, i have enough culture to build a town, but i choose not to do it, i get a bonus in mostly every downside a one-city country can have. the more towns you could build, the better the bonus) Else, in early ages this could be exploited as the bonus is huge, and then in renaissance age, the bonuses are so weak in comparison that most will switch to other less-punishing policy.

TL;DR: Scaling bonuses FTW!

To be honest, i'm not quite sure i would ever play with just one town, as it limits every single aspect in the game. and every means EVERY one. Less total culture, troops, science income, resource income, less random puzzles, no monsters at all, thus no "passive" experience (and with attack penalty on top... bye bye hero perks...), less digging sites, thus indirectly less equipment, less random visitors, and no animals, and all that without even needing to think about more complicated things. 

If you read the posts above, he is not suggesting single town. He is suggesting changes to advantages/disadvantages based on a quest-only player. There will be disadvantages to adding an additional town but an adventurer/quest player will seek additional towns to accomplish quests - not to build army or expansion. If you prefer armies or wide expansion, this politic is not for you.

Increasing the defence bonuses wouldn't help much.  What we typically see is a number of strong players combining to knock out the singleton with an initial attack in overwhelming force, sufficient to level the defences in that first attack.  Having a 300% bonus instead of a 200% bonus would just mean an increase in the casualties the attackers take, and they can rebuild those with the combined production of many towns.  The defender has no real way to recover while attacks continue.

If you read the posts above, he is not suggesting single town. He is suggesting changes to advantages/disadvantages based on a quest-only player. There will be disadvantages to adding an additional town but an adventurer/quest player will seek additional towns to accomplish quests - not to build army or expansion. If you prefer armies or wide expansion, this politic is not for you.

I wrote a huge post, and then i reloaded the page without saving... Anyways:I wrote my post before that was posted, i take my time to write,Copied and pasted from above, Politics which will encorage people who focus on single town.

I have said that these numbers are too low, because in later stages of the game, when people make more and more towns you will fall behind both if you build them or not, it's a matter of percentages, Towns tend to have each time more similar resource generation(and thus science) due to limited lvl of buildings.Let's suppose we both build the same stone age buildings,with the same production and science just different policy:I have this policy and you have leaderism. With both we 2 towns i win more than you (200%+50%>100%+100%). If i stop building more towns i fall behind, as you keep adding 100%, but if i also build them, with 4 towns (200%+50%+50%+50%<100%+100%+100%+100%) i am already winning less, and thus falling behind you.

Ok, granted, productions aren't going to be exactly equal,but in the same conditions they should be similar (at least mine are or try to be, call me maniac...) but with that plus the penalties you get just by using this policy and the fact that you are not going to have a bonus in story (we are supposed to build less towns, so less troops and a slower advance),I just say that the boost should be bigger or different, as it does not help any different kind of gameplay (or any at all) as it is thought to. Plus culture reducing? I'm smelling "problems" with people "being forced" to "change" their "policy". However this is not a thread to talk about that, so add the quotes where they make you feel good about the sentence.

Maybe adding faster movement to the pros... at least we will arrive earlier to quests places... ok,maybe too weak and versatile,i get it.

A few players here seem concerned about the setbacks of having single towns, namely less opportunities for adventure and hero+economy progress. While most of this may be true, it's not as serious as it initially looks. Having a more towns is not completely forbidden, only penalized to degree so as to discourage expansionist approach. I myself played with only two towns for a very long time and added more only near the end of medieval age. So I can safely say that having only two towns doesn't have that severe of an impact on one's progress.

If i stop building more towns i fall behind, as you keep adding 100%, but if i also build them, with 4 towns (200%+50%+50%+50%<100%+100%+100%+100%) i am already winning less, and thus falling behind you.

I thought this whole idea was concieved for players who DON'T want go competing head to head with leading players, but enjoy the story and adventure side of the game at their OWN PACE. We have to stop seeing from the perspective of competitive player who wants to be in top 10 of the leaderboard. Besides, the fact that 2 towns -  one with bonus and other with penalty equal 3 towns with 10% corruption is sufficient for most players. Serious players will make the most out of it and not be left too far behind their neighbours.

With all this said, having 1or 2 towns with a tiny domain is still disadvantageous. Aside from less monsters/chests/puzzles, the most notable being inability to muster big army (as Chao said) which can be pivotal for both defence & adventure. And if some essential resources like horse or sulfur happen to lie far beyond our borders, the army will be seriously handicapped. If most of these niggles are addressed eventually, the initial idea for this polity is a very good one.

With the first post i understood that this policy would help players more interested in story mode, but the bonuses don't seem to reward anything related directly to story. In the small quests we have i found that there are puzzle places and attack places, and these later are the only one that could have a bonus to it, maybe +X (10%, a small number) attack potency for troops while in quest places? I assume that with the downsides it has, only the players that want to pass story mode would make those sacrifice,so a non game-breaking bonus for them, in exchange for less troops is fine.

I also suppose that quest places will be each time further away from the kingdom, so a bonus in movement speed wouldn't also hurt. (with the attack penalties i don't think a lot of people will use this perk to attack)

I can't think of anymore that can be buffed for story mode right now, but with only 3 places its normal, maybe as they get released some more things would come out.

I also want to ask you something, are politics suited for gameplay types or for victory types? I see comm/leader more like ways of playing and this one more centered in adventure victory