Architect Archive

I have lots of free time on my hands, so it's easy for my wandring brain to sometimes stumble on something interesting.

So, yesterday it tripped over this idea, forgive me if this has already been kicked around & thrown out. I remember that in the early planning stages of this game they were thinking of making buildings customiseable, by making a number of standard walls, roofs, etc, that could be combined by players to make their own structures. I'm pretty sure this turned out to be too complicated to do before game launch, but I think now may be a good time to revisit that idea.

If done right, the existing structures could ba made into a few seamless seeming parts, in such a way that all existing structures would seem to have no change. What would change, however is that architects could create "addition kits" that would have to be installed onto a structure by an architect to be used. Additions could go both wider, and higher, at the discretion of the architect at installation time. There would be an increase in maintenance cost to any expanded building, and for cases where the building covers more ground, land use may need to go up by 1 land unit for each expansion.

Think what this simple change would do, you could buy a small house, and have it expanded to two, or 3 levels, maybe 1 above, and one below. There would have to be some sort of hard cap on the height of a building to aviod 200 story buildings showing up, but think of the fun!

There's all sorts of useful things we could do with these buildings, especially if we do it to some of the large player city structures. Imagine a 2-3 story large "mall" type building, where "shop" sections could be"leased" by merchants. The building would cost the city money to run, but if filled with paying merchants, it would generate money. Or how about an "apartment building" where it would have 4 units per floor, with 2 floors, expandable to 8 units/floor & 4 floors. Cities may want the ability to place "zoning restrictions" to keep their views from being cut off by 5 story houses. There could be some default size limits that could not be exceeded, except in cities that expand their limits higher than the defaut.

Some large house owners might want to add a floor or two to their house, and choose a floorplan for each floor installed. The trouble of matching stairways up could be avioded by installing elevators, like in the generic guild halls.

This would add a ton of variety to the game, because you could walk into a house that looks like no other house in the game, because it was made from a standard house, with 3-4 additions dropped into it.

The addition kits would have to be crafted ahead of time, and if an elevator were installed, it would be a separate kit that would have to go in before the new floors could be added. There could even be upgrade kits, or replacement kits to allow elevators service diferent numbers of floors. Of course, existing areas would have to change, and any building would be limited by where the elevator could be placed. I won't go into depth about how I would break up existing houses.

Anyway, I could keep going, but I'd like to see what others think, and read your input. Thanks!!