As time has past, and the organizations in the game have grown drastically in power. The need to gain more power has repeatedly dwindled to nil. Since there is no longer any great need, nor is there any great motivation other than for bragging rights. The one thing that it may be possible to use these great stores of power that we have gathered, is to create a Vernal God. Though I personally can not see the great appeal in that.

Currently, organizations can only use power for defense, nothing else. When there are other possibilities that just haven't been explored yet. Namely, commerce, transportation, exploration, development, just to name some areas that pop into my head right now. Commerce and Transportation especially appeal to me, and I have thought of some rough ideas for using power to aid in those areas.

Commerce - Villages form the basis of all commerce in the game, but other than doing comm quests. There is no way to significantly increase commodity production. And in the case of a few comms like vegetables, fruits, grain, ores, etc there is a limit on production. What I would like though, if organization could utilize power to increase production. Either targetted on one commodity type or on all production.

Transportation - I guess I should rename this to Planar Transportation, since my idea centers around that. I think it should be possible for the cities to utilize a vast amount of power to strengthen the link between their nexuses on each plane. Thus allowing transversing from and to any plane but Ethereal using their nexus.

They are both good ideas, but I'm assuming that these will be temporary effects that will have to replenished every once in a while? Maybe we can build something permanent using gold, power and commodities in order to create a benefit. (The arena for example, costed a ton of gold, but it's a permanent building.) A couple of examples:

Refinery: There will be a 10% output bonus for all iron tithed into the city/commune. Costs a ton of gold, power, and yadda yadda commodities to make.

Transplanar Booster: Allows cities to transverse from and to any plane but Ethereal using their nexuses. Costs a ton of gold, power, and yadda yadda commodities to make.

Those revisions sound good. Would need other upgrades like the Refinery for the other comms as well though.

I like that, the idea of the citys/communes building things to maximise their potential. You could build for example, an updated pentagram that allows enchanters to enchant faster.

This sounds really awesome. The organizations could do with upgrades like this and we especially need something to do with all that excess power.

But we must conserve... Must conserve... Must Vernalise someone...

Think of it kind of like Civilization in a way. You build a temple, you get happiness +2. You build a marketplace, you get a commerce + 10%. The only difference is that we're actually living in that city/world now, which makes it much more exciting.

Also, if such things are to be implemented, it should be quite difficult to create these buildings. It shouldn't be something that can be achieved easily, but it shouldn't be overly demanding in resources either because it may not be worth it in the long run.

Yeah I was kinda thinking like that. It would also give the culture ministers more to do. Running the building of... stuff.

You know, I'd like to see the cities and communes be able to expand, one or two rooms at a time. Imagine, in 200 years, you might have a sprawling metropolis. Celest could have all kinds of docks, have taller buildings, might start creeping up on the lands outside of it. That'd be pretty neat.

Yep, although you're already kind of doing that with your manse, Richter.

God don't mention Celest's docks to me it always irritated me that we could never use that flippin' navy.

And it could open up a whole new possibility of commune v city hostility! With Celest trying to build into the Oleanvir and Serenwilde getting all ratty and lying down in front of the bulldozers and stuff.

Ooh and all the buildings could be all unique for each org. *tingle*

Indeed, though I can never put rooms in/near/on existing things, I'm just making the aether bubble bigger.

Someone here mentioned that the arena cost gold. Does the Arena also cost power to build, or cost power to run events?

Nope.

we actually do expand our city a bit. Just that now everybody's saving up for some big ass temple.

I mentioned this on the IRC the other day actually and I was surprised by how little we actually have to spend even gold on, let alone power. There is room for expansion, but there isn't room for "improvements." There should be. Things like the refinery are good ideas.

Who knows, maybe they've already thought of this, there's still a huge book of Lusternia write!

There's some interesting ideas here. I don't know if this has been mentioned but remember the problem with building something static is that when it's built... then what?

Its going to take all cities/communes a little while to get all the 'upgrades', but when they are complete, they fall into the same excess power problem as before. Thus permanent buildings are ironically a temporary solution, not a long term one.

The only way to avoid this is to have each 'upgrade' have a significant ongoing power drain, such that it is nigh on impossible to sustain all upgrades at once, leaving choice between them key. However, any power drain approaching 'significant' is going to leave most orgs unable to make use of any upgrades at all - well, perhaps not, but it is a delicate balance to strike.

You must also be careful not to have those upgrades significantly assisting power collection since that would mean those nations that get ahead first are likely to remain ahead for good.

Just some things to keep in mind.

You could make it where it's a cummulative upkeep. Basically a small upkeep for one 'upgrade', if you have two upgrades, the cost is doubled on both, and so on. So that it is fairly easy to keep up 1 or 2 upgrades at a time, but almost impossible to keep up say 10 at once. This would make the choosing upgrades important and would also keep is relatively easy to at least get a couple of upgrades.