I find that one of the primary proponenets to this is that the buildings have no maintenance cost associated with them. If there were some kinda of limiter, difficult choices would need to be made in order to best design your city.

And maybe maintenance cost isn't quite the right way to address....

Here is an idea: Building Support

Each level of city has a 'building support' level. Each type of city has a modifier to that support level. Building can be built that provide additional support.

The thought would be that each city has some natural infrustructure limitation based on it's size and type. Perhaps it's 'tax revenue' or urban sprawl...whatever the justification...the point is that it should be almost impossible to build every building available. Choices must be made as to what buildings you want in what cities. Here is an example (note that this is not tested for balance...the values may need to be changed to make sense):

Towns: Receive +2 building support
Fortress: Receive +1 building support
Conclave: Receive +0 building support. 

Level 1 Cities: Have 3 building support
Level 2 Cities: Have 5 building support
Level 3 Cities: Have 7 building support
Level 4 Cities: Have 9 building support
Level 5 Cities: Have 11 building support

Then have some buildings that can add additional support. For example, the Town Hall could provide an additional +1 building support. The Tower of Dominion could provide +1 additional building support.

Thoughts? Comments?

Yes!  Either a tile per level limit or the above mentioned support mechanism would be great.  

Another idea:  only fortresses can train higher level "designed" troops.  Towns and conclaves can build spear levies and bowmen only.  Perhaps conclaves could impart magical bonuses to the troops from there and town troops are always one squad level ahead of trained troops to reflect quantity over quality?

Additional thought:  A conclave gains elemental defenders based on the shards owned by that faction.  2 fire shards gives you 2 fire elementals, 3 air shards equals 3 air elementals.  That could make for a great fight!

1) VERY interesting idea...but not sure how that would work effectively unless you did the following:

Towns cannot build units that require Iron or Crystal.

Only Conclaves can build units that require Crystal.

Only Fortresses can build units that require Iron and Crystal. (Seems odd that Crystal is added here, but does allow for the strongest units). Maybe have an available building that's Fortress only and grants availability to Crystal...

2) I have preference to Mages defending conclaves. Having different elementals feels too similar to the Binding trait. That said, it is an interesting idea.

Please don't stop.

I really like where this is going.. how about:

Towns - cannot train units that require crystal or wargs (but may access iron & horses).

Fortresses - can train anything (may access iron, crystal, horses, & wargs).

Conclaves - cannot train units that require iron (but may access crystal, horses, & wargs).

I feel like this would go a long way towards giving each city more character.

..another vote for making it so

That wouldn't solve anything- people generally don't build units much outside of fortresses.

I love building units out of Conclaves. Slower production, but the enchantment bonus on a 5-6 essence city is amazing.

About the only times I build from towns are when I need cannon fodder....fast. However, the suggestions listed above capture that.

Alstein has a good point here.  

I know it makes sense to train mages at a Conclave but that is not what the different city types are for.  Simplification of some game elements makes it easier for the AI to use them.  Towns are needed for food/gildar, conclaves are needed for research, and fortresses are needed for defense/troops.  

My beef with the system is we need to make these differences more pronounced;, as in fortresses and conclaves don't get food upgrades and need towns to supply them.  Both fortresses and towns produce next to no research but conclaves produce a lot.  Only basic troops from towns and conclaves, militia and pioneers, and everything else from fortresses.  This will give you more interdependence.  

I know nerfing is a bad subject area, but by giving everything to all the different types of cities except a few specific buildings you homogenize them all.  My suggestion is to limit all the upgradable items in cities to specific city types.  So all cities can make a workshop but only say a fortress can upgrade it.  More specialization basically.

While I agree with your general sentiment halmal, I don't believe the two notions are mutually exclusive: both would contribute to making each city feel more unique.  More specialized building trees would probably be my first line of attack.  However I definitely think we're on to something here with the idea of giving each city type more specialized unit rosters and production capabilities as well.  Honestly the nerfing direction discussed thus far doesn't really do much for me either, perhaps incentives would work better?  How about - Settlements: no bonus to production capabilities, Towns: unit production requires 50% less gold, Fortresses: unit production requires 50% less iron, Conclaves: unit production requires 50% less crystal?

Addition: a couple new building tiers unique to each city type could be introduced to increment the bonus(es) from 25% to 50%.  I'm relatively sure this is moddable..

Lack of personality in different soverigns

Lack of depth in the tech tree: I always pick what seems to be the "right" choice

Lack of variety in spells

Less diplomacy options than I'd  like

I think the city system in LH is the best in the genre. It beats Civ hands down especially when it comes to specialization. I don't think it needs any big changes. I already use and upgrade every type of city very differently. I never build units outside fortresses, get basically all my research from conclaves, and specialize towns towards gold and food. A lack of build time forces me to only build the improvements I need in every city. The main problem is the AI does not do this. Of course every system could be improved. I would love to see more city level improvements, enough to randomize the selection for every city level and thus present you with more options and make every city unique at the same time.

One recent post mentioned the lack of 'tough choices' that the player needs to make.
There are few choices that the player needs to make that close off some options and open new ones, and that irrevocably change the behavior of the game; having this would greatly increase the replay value.

Some examples:

• Technology
• one can almost always research the entire tech tree, which is the same for all factions

• Alternatives:
• In the upcoming game Beyond Earth, they have a technology 'web', where once a direction is chosen, only a subset of the tech tree can be reached
• Alpha Centauri: a deep, and very interesting tech tree
• some of the techs greatly affect the game play; can be a race between factions as to who researches key secret projects first (and the secret project themselves are interesting, add color, and change gameplay)
• Fall From Heaven 2: depending on alignment (good/neutral/evil), some options are available or locked
• different spells are also available
• Path of the Exile: also has a rich tech tree, of which only a limited area can be reached (even if not a 4X game)

After game starts, the game plays similarly regardless of the faction chosen...  the units might vary some (more armor, lack of ranged weapons, etc), but not radically different.

Possibilities:

• Could add civic/solution options (as in Civ 4/Civ 5) to change game play, and how other factions interact with you (am I creating a democracy? slave empire?  using conquered races for experimentation?  In addition to upsides, does it make revolt more likely?  random magical mutations?  other negative side effects?)

• Could add religions  (and in a fantasy setting, these can be extreme)
• this could cause AI factions to be very different depending on choices made
• and could allow the user's faction to be very different from game to game (am I worshipping great old ones? trying to end the world?  exterminate all life?  bringing law and order to the world?  create the one forest?  achieve total harmony?)
• if this caused certain building options to become available (or blocked), or changes choices when cities level up, even better.

Also, late game lacks 'epicness' to force the game to a climax under pressure

Approaches taken by other games:

• Shogun 2: get far enough ahead, and the 'Realm Divide' occurs, and all of the other factions unite against you
• (similar to the civil war in Rome total war)
• Alpha Centauri: planet begins awakening, forcing the player to respond
• or playing 'Fall From Heaven 2', and fighting an uphill battle as the infernals take over the world, and increase the armageddon counter, bringing in newer and larger enemy heroes...

Also for 'epic-ness',

• attacking a nation's level-5 capital should be a major, memorable, undertaking; it should be an involved undertaking, with seige equipment, walls, heavy defensive magic, etc... it currently feels too easy, and other than having a few extra defenders, is similar to taking a level-2 city
• it should be a culmination of a major campaign, something that takes planning and extra effort

Lastly, I like to play on a large map, with 6 AI players (expert); but after taking out one AI player,the game gets too easy, as the other AI players don't pose a threat.  They are passive, and can be picked off one by one (which is not very interesting).

• IF the AI players could unite, or if one could dominate and pose a threat, it would be much more challenging...
• or if the AI would open a portal, and summon otherworldly monsters that tried to overrun the world..
• or if the wildlands started growing, and had to be stopped...

Better yet, if the late-game challenge wasn't always the same, and was different depending on the choices (faction, religions, tech) made by the player...

Yeah LH doesn't seem to do this very well.

In LH it would be cool if, when you get far enough ahead all the factions of the opposite allegiance form an alliance against you, that'd be cool.... and if you get really far ahead everyone does.

Remember art style means different things to different people.  I enjoy some of the individual artistic decisions made in this game.  I like the general look of the towns, the map and the UI elements.  Most of those things are "eye-pleasing" and even genuinely unique for the game.

But someone it all doesn't come together for me in an immersive way.  It's like there were too many (or not any) art directors on the project guiding the soul of the game.  For example:

Both of these things have artistic/narrative qualities to them.  I consider these aspects that don't gel artistically with the rest of the game.  The stories behind the races and factions is (to me) uninteresting.  I don't get a sense that the magic is anything but a copy/paste of spells from other games.  These are the elements where the game had a chance to solidify the emotional impact by tying the gameplay to the aesthetics, but it just doesn't.... fit.  I'd have to think pretty deeply about it to point to specifically why I think the game doesn't pull it off.

TBH, GalCiv had the same problem yet the gameplay was just so satisfaying to me that I was able to say "okay this is just a really fun game that's low on the aesthetics."  I might be pickier than your average gamer, but when you give me a fantasy world, I'm not going to make the same concessions that I'm willing to make for a Sci-Fi setting.

I often spend five hours building an empire and then discover I've already outclassed the AI without ever coming into a real conflict with them, or I get one good battle out of them and they're done. It's a long time to play to discover that the planning I did was not necessary.

Monster threat level is inconstant. I've avoided battles because I thought I would get killed when I wouldn't and others I started and lost badly. Also regarding whether I use auto-resolve. I'll think it's a nothing battle and then I'll lose units to my surprise. The auto-resolve is meant to save time but since it's unpredictable I have to save every time and reload if it goes bad. So my suggestion is do whatever calculations auto-resolve would use before you select it and show it saying "you will lose 2 units" in which case you'd would control it yourself. In general, having played a lot of games over the years I think if some part of the game will just result in a save-reload situation then the game should be designed either so save-reload isn't possible or is unnecessary.

A better example is the two fertility spells. Sometimes they do nothing at all and there doesn't seem to be a way to know beforehand. Once I tried it on a desert and got some new city sites, and another time I used it on a green field and got nothing. Of course I'm not going to waste 200 mana trying it at random till something works. I'm going to save and reload. So it should show you result of using the spell before you use it.

What do I like least about this game? Well, first of all, I really dislike how this game has sucked me in. I was totally oblivious of this game but since joining the GalCiv3 Alpha I've seen posts about it, then I started to read the posts and then saw the Stardock sale and said why not? I've had no friggin' life since... I hate how I keep thinking about this silly game all day long and can't wait until I can play it again. I dislike how I pretend I'm into the show I'm watching with my wife when I really rather be on my computer playing this game. I dislike how I've bought all the DLC for it so it's even MORE enticing... I dislike how I've now joined the founders group for Elemental 2015... I haven't gamed like this since my college partying days! So thank you very much Mr. Froggieboy I realize once again I have no life to speak of and my wife is ticked at me again. It's all your fault!!! So that's what I don't like about this stinkin' game.