Capital vs Satellites

In the past I increased bonuses in the capital to make the early game less volatile. For example, in vanilla a lucky Ancient Ruins for a turn-10 Tradition increases policy rate to 400%. In vem it's a more modest 200%. I did similar things for gold and production. However, an unfortunate side-effect is it made the situation worse between the capital and satellite cities. When the palace gives 5 of every yield and other cities have just 0-1, it's really a no-brainer of where to build wonders, settlers, military units... everything important.

To solve both these problems in v138 I've turned some palace bonuses into per-player bonuses. This balances start locations without focusing too much on one city.

For example, right now we already have a free 12. It's per-player instead of coming from the palace. I can do similar things with science, gold, and culture. Production is a little trickier since it's local. However, production and gold can both be used to construct units & buildings. By reducing the production bonus, and increasing the gold bonus, construction is less centralized.

In my current test games I'm trying out the values below:

• 0 00 2 2 Palace (was 5, 5, 5, 5).
• 5 15 3 per player (was 0, 0, 0).
• 2 00 per city (was 1, 1)
• 30 cost Scouts (was 40).
• 60 cost Workers (was 80).
• 60 cost Granary, Stable, Walls, and Barracks (was 90).

One great side effect is this lets early costs more closely match benefits, without those units/buildings constructing crazy fast in the capital. A lower worker cost should also make worker stealing less critical to the early game.

Personally i like that the culture expand slowly, and for same reason avoid the stonehage wonder.
Other then that looks interesting tho i would keep the cost of walls and maybe 75 for barracks.

Lot of reasons but im to tired to point them out hehe

MortalD said:

Personally i like that the culture expand slowly, and for same reason avoid the stonehage wonder.
Other then that looks interesting tho i would keep the cost of walls and maybe 75 for barracks.

Lot of reasons but im to tired to point them out hehe

Click to expand...

Remember wall lost their engy slot so they're back to nearly useless if/until you get the liberty/tradition policy of your choice.

2 prod 2 food + def ability. If u think thats weak or lack mentioned policies then don't build them in every city.
Liberty finisher is already weak and useful only early on without cheaper walls.
Barracks are to be build where u produce your military not spamed in every city. Scouts end up as overpowered archers ( opportunities ) that are abused by human player with deadly efficiency and getting a worker was always part of early game strategy + that also weakens Liberty. It will also boost player considerably and that in effect will make AI weaker. ( AI start with workers anyway so it will not boost the AI as the player )

To sum it up, I like the changes to palace and per-player idea. Also dont mind cheaper grannary and stables. But scouts, workers, walls and barracks are fine as they r now.

Thats my opinion

I've thought the same thing. My Capital ends up with all the wonders and units and %buildings and the other cities just produce stuff to survive.

This sounds incredible. I tend to play tall anyway, and so end up stacking tons of Culture (World Wonders, Landmarks) or Science (farms, Academies) in the Capital, depending on which Victory Condition I'm pursuing... and it gets old quite fast! I assume the yields shared by all cities will respond to City focuses like City-State yields currently do? If so, I really think the update documentation (on the Wordpress) should explicitly note this; I suspect lots of players would like to know how it works.

I'm not sure about the Stable discount and cultural border expansion changes, but definitely like all the rest. I'll admit I don't have that great a feel how quickly satellites' cultural borders expand yet, but couldn't we just reduce the base cost but leave the multiplier as is?

I feel that acquiring most 2nd-ring tiles should be relatively easy (to keep the Great Wall useful, for example), but that 3rd-ring tiles should require some significant investment (among other things, to keep Stonehenge useful).


edit:
I wanted to add, I'm really conflicted about the recent +1% from the Capital per . I really like how it helps tall Civs compete in and rewards high levels of , but it pretty much predetermines what to do with your Capital in Science victory games: before Turn 1, I know my Capital will have lots of farms, lots of Academies. Changing the bonus to instead of would thematically make more sense to me, but wide civs already have a disadvantage in Culture... anyway, no suggestions on anything to change, just saying.

I like this idea. But I am wary of making ICS more viable than it already is.

MortalD said:

I like the changes to palace and per-player idea. Also don't mind cheaper granary and stables. But scouts, workers, walls and barracks are fine as they are now.

Click to expand...

The idea is to keep the # of turns required to build these items in the capital approximately the same as before. If they go a lot slower, it makes the early game somewhat tedious.

v137
50 / 6 = 8 turn scouts
80 / 6 = 13 turn workers
90 / 6 = 15 turn barracks
90 / 6 = 15 turn walls

v138
40 / 4 = 10 turn scouts
60 / 4 = 15 turn workers
60 / 4 = 15 turn barracks
60 / 4 = 15 turn walls

wobuffet said:

I'll admit I don't have that great a feel how quickly satellites' cultural borders expand yet, but couldn't we just reduce the base cost but leave the multiplier as is?

Click to expand...

This is the first thing I tried. It goes from 20 cost (first tile) to 140 (second tile). With a monument in a city, we get the first in 4 turns and the second in 32 turns. It felt weird to have such a big jump. This difference in cost from one tile to the next is something I only recently started being aware of. I think the difference is too high for early tiles, and too low for later ones. I'm considering something like v138 B below.



Basically costs start low and rise faster. This means we could reasonably get ~5 tiles with a monument, but then expansion would be extremely slow. Building a Temple might get us another ~10 tiles quickly, then slow down again. An opera house might give us ~15 tiles, a museum ~20, and so on. The Tradition expansion bonus would speed all this up for tall empires.

How much worse will the fourth ring be? I believe it's not unreasonable for a tall empire to want to be able to fill up all five rings at their capital by say turn 200 and I doubt that will be possible with the new increases beyond third ring. The changes you propose are a buff to wide and a nerf to tall empires who are already having trouble filling in the large gaps between cities.

I've gotta focus on average situations. It's like how it's not practical to balance the game for both Pangaea and Archipelago, Normal and Marathon. I think of tall empires as high population cities ~6 tiles apart. Building further apart leaves a lot of unusable tiles. A city can reach happiness-neutral status with a low investment, so it would improve the empire by placing a city in gaps between cities more than 6 tiles apart.

Thalassicus said:

I've gotta focus on typical situations. It's like how it's not practical to balance the game for both Pangaea and Archipelago, Normal and Marathon. I think of tall empires as high population cities ~6 tiles apart. If you're building 10 tiles apart... it's a lot of wasted space. I'm not sure it's feasible to balance both that and more typical empires.

Click to expand...

I place my cities about 6-8 tiles apart depending on the quality of the land nearby. I'm not shooting for more than 3-4 so I can be *very* selective about where I place the cities and leave a few gaps.

However it always used to be that you would pick up 4th-5th tier resources (although I guess I could buy the 4th tier now so that's mitigated somewhat) from expansion when another city to pick up the resource wasn't justified in a tall strategy. This is now a slowly process and I just feel that the expansion is too slow. What about rebuffing the tradition policy to back where it was?

The tradition policy is a multiplier on an exponent, so increasing the exponent buffs the policy. The cost to expand to all 5 rings with Tradition is about the same as before:

It seems to me that the map generator sometimes places a player on a location primed for a super-capital with not much else around it. If this is true, keep it in mind with regard to de-emphasizing the capital. Also keep in mind (as you noted) that too much of a capital slowdown makes the game really boring in the early stages - especially if you're taking an NC approach.

Thanks! Given that I'm excited to try the new version and see how it works.

Also was the city change from 1 to 2 production intended to nerf building cities on hills (since now it will provide zero extra production), or was that unintended?

Cities on hills should give 3 in v137.3; are they not doing so? It does reduce the proportional benefit of the hill bonus (1->2 is 200% while 2->3 is 150%), but I'm okay with that.

Thalassicus said:

Cities on hills should give 3 in v137.3; are they not doing so? It does reduce the proportional benefit of the hill bonus (1->2 is 200% while 2->3 is 150%), but I'm okay with that.

Click to expand...

I didn't actually check (hence here instead of the bugs forums), just thought of it as I was posting and figured I should mention it just in case. I'll check when I get started in a game.

I included code to handle it, so it's a bug if that doesn't work.

Thalassicus said:

In the past I increased bonuses in the capital to make the early game less volatile. For example, in vanilla a lucky Ancient Ruins for a turn-10 Tradition increases policy rate to 400%. In vem it's a more modest 200%. I did similar things for gold and production. However, an unfortunate side-effect is it made the situation worse between the capital and satellite cities. When the palace gives 5 of every yield and other cities have just 0-1, it's really a no-brainer of where to build wonders, settlers, military units... everything important.

To solve both these problems in v138 I've make some palace bonuses into per-player bonuses. This balances start locations without focusing too much on one city.

For example, right now we already have a free 12. It's per-player instead of coming from the palace. I can do similar things with science, gold, and culture. Production is a little trickier since it's local. However, production and gold can both be used to construct units & buildings. By reducing the production bonus, and increasing the gold bonus, construction is less centralized.

In my current test games I'm trying out the values below:

• 0 00 2 2 Palace (was 5, 5, 5, 5).
• 5 15 3 per player (was 0, 0, 0).
• 2 00 per city (was 1, 1)
• 30 cost Scouts (was 40).
• 60 cost Workers (was 80).
• 60 cost Granary, Stable, Walls, and Barracks (was 90).

One great side effect is this lets early costs more closely match benefits, without those units/buildings constructing crazy fast in the capital. A lower worker cost should also make worker stealing less critical to the early game.

Click to expand...

I like this balanceing act ALOT - with the minor exception of the gold removed from city. It just looks strange. Maybe i'll get used to it.

atola said:

The extra production in a city means that there is no production benefit now in the city if built on a hill.

Click to expand...

Cities on hills should give 3 in v137.3 and up; are they not doing so?