Do we still get punished for having a large empire?

Hey guys. I haven't touched CIV V since Gods & Kings came out... which was quite awhile ago. One of the main problems I had was that I liked to conquer and expand ( Because I'm generally a warmonger ) and as a consequence I would get an unhappy populace and sometimes very unhappy. I learned to cope with this by getting as much luxuries as possible and either puppet or raze based on whether the city was valuable or not.

I'm just wondering in BNW does the same exact thing happen or has this changed with BNW?

I'm gonna buy BNW in a few days, btw.

Err, Gods & Kings doesn't punish a wide empire. As long as you have the happiness for it and don't mind missing out on policies, a new city is better than not having a new city.

Brave New World punishes wide empires, or at least super-wide. There's a science penalty for every city you found. Gone are the days of Maya ICS...

It is hard to conquer other empires in the early-mid game without a religion tailored to bring happiness. Ceremonial burial is still good despite being cut in half (1 happy per 2 cities following religion). Pagodas, mosques, and the follower belief that gives 2 happy per temple are top choices as well. Once you hit the industrial age you will get alot of happiness from your ideology, provided you are not being dominated by a rival civs tourism from a differing ideology. Autocracy is fantastic at keeping your Civ happy as you assimilate other empires.

There are warmonger penalties that come when capturing a city, minor warmonger, major and extreme warmonger penalties. Other ais abuse you for warmongering in bnw.

So if I start wars and expand pre-industrial I'm screwed?

The reason I ask is because I use a mod called Ironman which quadruples the rate of technology and building times. So it will take a very long time to reach industrial.

If you're a competent warmonger you can do fine even when whole world hates on you.

But in Brave new world, the usual mechanic holding you back is the same. Happy faces.

Happy faces and science. One can debate whether the term "punished" is applicable, because you may not fare significantly worse by going wide ... but you don't fare particularly better either, and question then must be: Why bother? Given that going wide has penalties on diplomacy (more shared borders) and military (more land needs to be defended), it's kind of disappointing that it doesn't really benefit your economy (fixed number of trade routes) or science (science penalty per city). If you aim for cultural victory, however, wide will often make that easier because more land means more access to artifact sites, and more cities means more museums with combination bonuses.

You don't get punished for having large empire in the higher difficulties. However, when eliminating another AI and taking all their cities will usually cause the other AIs to be more hostile and make more DoWs against you. Taking another AI's capital and allowing the civilization alive causes that civilization to denounce and turn everyone against you.

To overcome problems of science penalty whilst conquering, play as Assyria. Liberating cities (CS or civ) will neutralize warmonger penalties.

I like the penalty, tall cities is what makes Civ5 less tedious for me. It is more fun and requires less micromanagement.

It's arguable whether it's a "penalty," but for the most part Tall cities outperform wide ones. The "default" way to play for many players in BNW is 4 cities, Tradition policies, Tall.

The issue is basically that the way BNW (and Civ 5 as a whole) is set up, it's really not worth expanding later on. This is in contrast to Civ 4 where you usually wanted to grab any land you could defend. Both have their flaws. But it has resulted in some really funny things in BNW, like on Terra maps, not expanding onto the new Continent (unless you happen to be Polynesia and could do it early) is often the ideal way to go. There just isn't a point in expanding only to, at best, roughly break even.

I think BNW made it a little easier to found cities in the late game. 2 sea trade sending food and your city will grow very fast.

isau said:

It's arguable whether it's a "penalty," but for the most part Tall cities outperform wide ones. The "default" way to play for many players in BNW is 4 cities, Tradition policies, Tall.

The issue is basically that the way BNW (and Civ 5 as a whole) is set up, it's really not worth expanding later on. This is in contrast to Civ 4 where you usually wanted to grab any land you could defend. Both have their flaws. But it has resulted in some really funny things in BNW, like on Terra maps, not expanding onto the new Continent (unless you happen to be Polynesia and could do it early) is often the ideal way to go. There just isn't a point in expanding only to, at best, roughly break even.

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Yeah, I think it's a tough balance, because on one side, we don't want wide to be hands down better than tall, because that means you'll just go wide every time. On the other hand, I do feel that in some ways, pre-BnW was better than post-BnW in the sense that pre-BnW tall was better for culture but wide was better at science. This meant you had to accomodate your empire to your game strategy. Now it's more even, which might be good for balance, but also means less variation in game approach because both tall and wide are fairly equal at all game styles.

Policy costs go up with each non-puppeted city you have. National wonders cost more if you have went wide(I'm not sure if puppeted cities increase this cost).

Why did they make it more difficult to spread out by giving you science and policy penalties? Seems like a stupid move to me.

In bts, having a large empire was the only way to dominate, but in bnw that has changed where taking all the capitals is the only way to dominate.

Yes, there is a penalty to having a large empire in BNW. The form it takes varies:

1. Self founding wide carries the penalties of making it difficult to build remaining national wonders along with the risk of AI hating you. Also if you go crazy, you might temporarily slow down your overall science until libaries etc built.

2. Conquering wide and leaving as puppets: Minor science penalty of puppet cities [compared to direct control], in some extreme cases could result in it actually being net negative for science, but unlikely. In addition minor cultural penalty to puppet cities; mostly felt in slow as molases additional cultural expansion. (Also the minor one of no direct control over puppets)

3. Conquering wide and annexing. This carries the same making it difficult to build remaining national wonders penalty that self founding wide does; but a bit reduced with the city already having some population.

4. Keeping too many captured cities close together / founding them too close together: In addition to above penalty carries happiness issues. And in extreme cases could also be net negative to science.

The order and autocracy ideologies have domination victory helpers that can make a large empire less punishable. Police state which has the extra happiness per courthouse could come useful and socialist realism which gives happiness per monument can really make the happiness add up especially in large empires.

The game won't punish you much as far as I know, but be warned: Napoleon will backstab you if you expand to much and your his ally. I learned that the hard way.

oPunchDrunko said:

Why did they make it more difficult to spread out by giving you science and policy penalties? Seems like a stupid move to me.

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Because people were pissing and moaning that the game was too biased towards expansion and wide>tall. Now that they're somewhat balanced the same people are realizing that it's much easier and less risky to just stagnate at 3-4 cities and expanding only slows you down. Now they're upset that expansion isn't very rewarding.

Only reason to hyper expand now is if you plan on warmongering and can manage the science hits. One of the reasons Order is my favored ideology most of the time...

I think the science penalty was added to compensate for internal trade routes and how fast you can inflate your beaker production with them when going wide. It had to be added for game pacing. Only problem is if you use too many trade units for ITRs your economy suffers. I think they could improve the wide game by adding a trade slot based on total number of cities. Maybe 1 TR for every 5 cities. It'd give players impetus to settle that 5th city rather than sticking at the 4 standard.

It'd also help wider empires with their higher maintenance costs and gold rushing needs. I hate how a 4 city empire has the same income as a 20 city empire but the 4 city empire has far less to spend it on. I played a game a while ago where I took commerce, got Big Ben and took Skyscrapers. I thought I could expand and develop with gold rushing but it was really sad how the same gpt I could have had with 4 cities had to be spread out so much thinner. Even the stacked discounts didn't help much.