Now i don't want to take away from gameplay or fun, but it would be cooler and prettier, and more enjoyable if the city actually looked like a real city.
Possible ways are....
1) Terrain
--a: trees grow back
--b: the ability to plant trees.
--c: pernament mines where villagers dig into the earth searching for gold or stone at a slower rate, but have an infinate income of resouces.
--d: Have a better terrain for where a forest used to be. At the end of an Aok game there are huge circles of brown.
--e: I have always thought the terrain would look 50x more real if it moved. Howabout trees and grass sway with the wind?
2) Houses
--Now there has been some rumors over HG about houses. We don't even know if there will be any. Deathshrimp has hinted at how pop limit will be controlled saying it will be awesom or cool, which suggests its different. One popular rumor is that its determined by controlled fertile land. If its different, then will there be houses? In most Aok screenshots and campaigns, there were roads. But this was eye candy and not implementable in RM or DM.
--a: Have roads spring up automatically on heavily traveled sections. Maybe between two Town Centers, or Two markets, or between allys.
--b: Have the ability to build roads like walls, and friendly units gain movement bonuses.
--c: Maybe have houses spring up automatically around your town, spaced out so units may pass freely. Maybe if your empire gets really big, houses may become apartments, (i'm not really sure if this would fit Norse life.) The futher away from a town center, the move spaced out they are. This would help establish a players territory.
3) City life
--full of farmers. Nothin else.
--a: I'm not sure, but i don't think a city is full of farms, i thought those were on the outskirts. And all of these ideas of mine are just ideas. They may sound radical, and they may have problems, so respond to anyone one of them. Anyway, howabout being able to buy farms at the mill, and they spring up outside your town, no villagers needed. Or maybe villagers could farm, but not have to travel to a mill or TC to dump off there food. If you don't need villagers, farms would have to be expensive, and a limit set on them based on the amount of territory under your control. It would also be nice if they didn't deteriorate, but could be destroyed.
--b: Pernament mines or trees that grow back would increase city activity.
4) Troops
--a: Heres an idea. Click on a barracks, click "train swordsman" A man appears from a house in the city and travels to a barracks. Becomes trained. That way the closer a barracks is to a town, the faster the training time, This stops people from building barracks right next to your town and training gobs of units from nowhere.
Feel free to support or hate my ideas, I want ES to see this. So i may top it periotically.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.