additional cities linked to population only?

In principle I agree, placing such high pop demands for City building means creating completely unrealistic cities with the focus not on playability but on the highest pop buildings, missing out low pop ones such as Barracks, building Military Lodges that will never be used or multiple Trade Offices in Cities that have no Merchants.
At some point presumably players must switch back to more playable Cities but with the realisation that without another very expensive overall their building days are over and anything lost in war is lost forever.
The problem with using a ranking system is that the rankings are well known to be open to abuse (if people can be bothered)
Perhaps just reduce the pop requirements or bring in factors that allow Cities not to count towards your limit, a city stability and/or loyalty rating, not sure how to do this at present, its just an idea. Ok theses are my thoughts for now.


Edited by Morgweneth - 18 May 2015 at 21:52

currently to be able to build additional cities an account must meet certain population level. OMG this is so yesterday play and is not progessive style of game play. i mean this is 2015, its not 2010 and it seems like a throw back to another era of playing. it has so many drawbacks such as the moving city building reduction which effects population totals and also the dramatic loss of cities in war situation. what player wants to start at a lower population when it has such a great effect in the amount of cities one can have? also arent the devs aware of the boredom of building one city at a time when this occurs?.....my suggestion is to tie growth of cities to a number of game playing factors. population can still be one method but also include something like the ranking system to be included also...my point being is reward the player that is playing other aspects of the game. this way they are rewarded by the effort they putting into the game and not just logging in once or twice a week clicking build then leaving. lets give the active player more reasons to play the game, reward them with a different sytem to gain and maintain their current city totals, but give them a reason not to play. plus lets make this a forward playing style game and upgrade functions that were in place decades ago....we need more active players! lets make this game rock! what are others thoughts?