I would like to start a discussion about the current city centers and population growth limits in the game.
The city centers are self sufficient entities, starting the player in a world where everything is fine and he can make addons to his city. On one hand this is good, because the player cannot make severe mistakes and his city will stay running longer, but on the other hand it means that the player is not using the mechanics of the game. One instance of that is the population limit system.
When I played my first game, I found it curious to have a hard limit on maximum population and I didn't know how to increase it (turns out I needed diners, I thought at first they were for happiness and the food would usually get processed in factories to be purchased in retail). The fixed population number means that the player will never run into a position where his population tries to expand above the cap and then asks the player to provide more meals/water/dining places. I think it would be good if this limit is not as artificially set to a number, but more of a soft limit, where when the player goes over, he gets a notification that there are food supply problems occuring or simply not enough places to eat at and that he can then either impose a hard birth control limit or food rationing to solve the issue or simply know that he needs to provide more of the resources needed and build accordingly.
The other thing with the city centers is that they supply you all basic resources from the start, leaving the player (me) wondering what to pursuit. I mean if I would get one free farm, water tower and diner for free at the start of the game instead of the city center providing everything for me, it would also serve to educate the player as well as put emphasis on the resources and where they come from, leaving options for strategic choice by the player. This also has the additional benefit that warfare could be about starving people, as you could take out someones whole food supply without having to erase their city center, but I am far from even thinking about such things.
The city center also changes supplies when it levels up, adding slightly to the confusion, because you always have to re-evaluate (until you remember it) on what you truly need after an expansion.
So what do people think? Am I missing something else completely obvious that makes self sufficient starting city centers good? I would like to hear opinions on that thing, even though I am still very much a beginner of the game.
