for the argument of “can you play without establishing a city?” - I‘d say building a settlement is still city building. Any arguments I can think of really is just arguing semantics. City building is at its core placing down buildings that produce stuff, that’s exactly what a settlement does.
For the sake of designing a challenge that someone is doing for the fun of it, I’d say go ahead and keep settlements. But I’d still say that’s establishing a city. It just resets every now and then.
an excellent point. So we’d be able to get to the end of Virtual Future before we’d need to touch city building mechanics. Again, I’d be arguing semantics to include settlements but not colonies or vice versa. If you‘re not using the main city then any side cities would be replacing your main city
I think in that case we could design up branching off different variations of the challenge to not establish an city:
1.) No any building (settlements & colony can't be used so, SAM's first tech without Mars ore is the highest achievable age)
2.) No own establishment (no main city, no colony, settlements are allowed to unlock emissary)
3.) No non-replaceable resource producing establishment (only colony's credits producing buildings allowed in the colony, no main city or settlements allowed)
4.) No main city establishment (building outside the city is allowed, colonies & settlements for unlocking emissaries & space goods specials)
Though I agreed with u. A true non-city builder challenge in FoE would get stuck as soon space age special goods are required.
