How could a civilization end up building cities? would you have to place down buildings individually(like spore, but more complex), placing down districts like in civ 6, or just plopping down cities(probably too simple)
Also, how could you influence your building style? I think it could be cool to implement a feature where the kind of creature or tribe you were influences your building style, and what you can create(for example if you are a creature that generally lived in caves, you could build vast, but not tall huts
For the building placement I think zoning areas for specific buildings, and then having the game build them for you would make the most sense. This would work the best because it’s infinitely scaleable. Things like roads would have to be procedural though, because designing the roads for your entire planet just wouldn’t work.
On building style, I don’t really know, if the buildings end up being procedural, then the decorations would have to be somewhat procedural, with limited player input, but if the buildings are premade, or are made completely by the player, the player could add any decorations they want to any part.
There are a lot of ways to make a city besides a cluster of buildings upon the ground
Consider the possibility of swarming migrators making cities: They would need something quick and temporary (or even entirely mobile) for their structures
For a closer-to-human example, fossorial creatures would not build but would dig, and form underground burrows for their cities
Even the basic components will be different: For example, many species (including intelligent ones) have no real need for shelter or bedding the way humans do
Sorry for the necro, but like maybe an algorithm in the game could decide what your city looks like based on the environment you were in when you developed sapience. For example, if you lived somewhere with lots of clay and mud, you could have mud brick houses and adobe abodes. or if you were from somewhere with lots of grass, you could have thatch huts. your original style determines how your city develops in the later parts of society and maybe even industrial stages.
Another example: if you had mud bricks, you might not need to develop stone buildings, or maybe you just can’t. In the industrial stages, if you develop skyscrapers, they could look like mud buildings(they would still be made of steel and glass), to match your civilization’s glorious past or whatever. either way, I am so excited for the later stages
Last part, if you have an arboreal civilization, you might at first either just live inside trees, or make treehouses and later on, your skyscraper cities could just not be skyscrapers and have large trees. Underwater civilizations(not going to explain how it would work, because we have to learn from the mistakes of the past.) could make buildings out of coral because sand and things like that would not work. later on in the late industrial stage when you invent biotechnology, your coral cities could become visible from a continent view, probably not a planet view though. If you were so somehow invent lightbulbs.(maybe by bioengineering bioluminescent coral extensions, you could theoretically see city lights. (Please don’t argue about underwater civilizations again, I don’t want this to be one of those posts.
I know I’m double postings, so sorry, but here are some images of progression as an example for thatch houses
Level 1 (Starts at the beginning of society)
Level 2(Mid-Early Society)
Industrial stage
Space Age(next post)
