I don’t think, at least for the initial banner choice, that you should be able to change it. If you do, only early in game. That is because the banners nudge you to design your towns differently. A town with road buffs will make more use of roads. If you change that in the middle of your game, you need to deal with all the changes that brings (which, now I think of it, could be a good price to pay for it, although it is very uncontrollable from a design standpoint. Maybe that does change my mind.). Instead, maybe in tier three we get the option of making more banners, details are as follows:
- Your original banner ‘upgrades’ to a bigger, more permanent monument (as I’ve suggested before).
- You can have the ability to have multiple different banners, as well as their buffs.
- Since the magic responsible for the buffs comes from the banners (from what I’ve heard), having mutiple banners that you can place around your city will create sectors. In each sector (area around banner), there will be different buffs. By placing these banners however you want, you create your sector layout, so no boxing in there.
This creates the gameflow where you first focus on one aspect a city can excell at, then you grow and can handle more things at a time, so you create sectors which are catered to their prupose within the town. It further expands the gameplay beyond tier three, because it opens up alot of things you can still do.
Then for things like items being locked behind choice, you can have traders sell them to you, you can get hearthlings with the skills necessary to make certain crafts. If all cities would get all of these, you wouldn’t have to choose. However, if the game tracks the general type of city you are, the game can change the chances that you get these things based on that. That would work out to a system where you can get everything, but certain things are more likely in certain towns.