+5% technology cost for each new city

Am I the only one trying to understand the rationale behind this change in BNW? Why add the 5% penalty for expansion?

Global Happiness and Social Policies already work well to prohibit expansion. Regardless of science you really struggle to stay happy if you expand too much in the early game. The increased Social Policy cost is enough in and of itself to encourage tall players; by going wide you have to accept the sacrifice of sometimes massively reduced Social Policy acquisition. A tall player myself I don't feel the extra technology cost as much as others might but I nevertheless struggle to understand why it's included. For me, it pushes the balance too far in the direction of tall and punishes the wide game too much, from the pretty balanced state they were in in GnK. I see very few, if any reasons to go wide any more. Even when warring you're strongly encouraged to raze the majority of the cities you capture, which for me takes a lot of the fun out of the game.

What do you guys think about the +5% technology cost for extra cities?

I see it mainly as a nerf to puppets. Cities where you control the production (read: build science buildings and assign scientist specialists) will generally produce plenty of beakers to overcome the 5% penalty. The other situation it hurts is ICS. Seeing as how both of these strategies were a bit OP in G&K, I am ok with the current balance. Wide empires are still totally viable, just not to the extreme end where you would be keeping your cities small on purpose for happiness reasons.

I think it's a horrible idea and if I weren't so lazy, I'd activate the mod nullifying it (or reducing to something more reasonable, like 1%) every game.

I don't like it. I dislike it heavily. I hate it. Happiness and social policy acquisition are more than enough to slow conquest/expansion to a halt in many cases, added science penalty in a 4x game is not a good idea. Would be fine if it were like 1%, but 5% is a big nope.

mrwho said:

Am I the only one trying to understand the rationale behind this change in BNW? Why add the 5% penalty for expansion?

Global Happiness and Social Policies already work well to prohibit expansion. Regardless of science you really struggle to stay happy if you expand too much in the early game. The increased Social Policy cost is enough in and of itself to encourage tall players; by going wide you have to accept the sacrifice of sometimes massively reduced Social Policy acquisition. A tall player myself I don't feel the extra technology cost as much as others might but I nevertheless struggle to understand why it's included. For me, it pushes the balance too far in the direction of tall and punishes the wide game too much, from the pretty balanced state they were in in GnK. I see very few, if any reasons to go wide any more. Even when warring you're strongly encouraged to raze the majority of the cities you capture, which for me takes a lot of the fun out of the game.

What do you guys think about the +5% technology cost for extra cities?

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It's a nerf to Super Wide/ICS empires, and it's balanced out by many ideological tenets and the many other advantages of ICS.

Here's why it was needed: sure, wide empires have slower social policy generation, but what if you don't care about Social Policies? Those aren't needed for CV anymore, and a super wide empire gets more science, faith, and culture per turn than a tall one, which was an indirect buff to ICS in the culture game, when ICS was already potent in the science/religion game. That's not even counting Reformation Beliefs, which can get Sacred Sites and you'll have more tourism than anyone -- hell, that even works now! I've heard people say they can win a CV in Medieval times like that. Happiness used to be a major limiter of ICS, but not anymore. Ideologies drop happiness from the sky, so you can get very, very wide at the turn of the industrial age, and then grow those new cities with internal trade routes.

Going wide also gets you more resources, more digsites, and more city connections, which can get ridiculously lucrative -- at one point in a game where I owned my whole continent, I was making over 300 gold from my city connections, and had over 400 gpt during golden ages because I was full commerce and full rationalism, and my trading posts were effectively better than my luxury tiles. Oh, sure, I would temporarily start losing gold while I waited for Resistance to end, but once it did, my GPT would skyrocket. I didn't even need trade routes anymore. 80% of my trade routes were internal.

Oh, and Super Wide also auto-wins any World Congress competition, almost ALL of which give you a free social policy for winning, effectively erasing Super Wide's disadvantage of getting fewer Social Policies, so ICS needed something to rein it in.

You can play on Large or Huge maps, where the penalty is 3% and 2% respectively. It's apparently supposed to nerf the AI a little bit. No longer do we have to worry about Hiawatha spamming cities and getting mass science.

It does make you wanna rethink your settling strategies, though.

Doktor Vic Tim said:

You can play on Large or Huge maps, where the penalty is 3% and 2% respectively. It's apparently supposed to nerf the AI a little bit. No longer do we have to worry about Hiawatha spamming cities and getting mass science.

It does make you wanna rethink your settling strategies, though.

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It is quite effective at nerfing the AI. Perhaps they should program the AI to take it into account before settling, however. At the very least, some AIs do go tall now.

If someone feel its to hard for him, he can always go into xml file worlds or something, and change it to any value he fancy.

As for basic 5%, if that is to hard for you overcome, then problem is with you not a game. Since with decent population and all 4 slots running you will still be good.

Also it is worth to know that rationalism generally benefit wide more. Science per specialist, then flat increase to all cities, and trading post thing... and im still not sure if wide do generate specialist a little bit faster. So do not complain so much. For me rationalism is actually too good for wide. If opener was just for capital that would be more balanced, since will give more fight to tall at least in terms of science.

Of course it works only if your cities are decent, but i doubt anyone miss ICS.

I agree that they could make AI more picky with city placing.

I almost feel like we need to get into the alchemy of pre-determining an 'ideal' empire size again ala Civ3 as flat penalties for expansion always creates these kinds of threads.

People make a big deal about the penalty because it's easy to think "If I found another city, my science will be slower," but the math doesn't really work that way. More cities still means faster advancement unless the extra cities are just left underdeveloped.

Here's why: Science is a function of population, and two small cities grow much, much faster than one large one. For example, compare a sophisticated size 30 city with a (library/university/public school) to a new size 1 city. Each new citizen in the size 30 city might effectively produce three times as much science as each new citizen in the size 1 city, but I guarantee that it will take more than three times as long for the size 30 city to actually create that new citizen.

The 5% penalty just makes it so that you end up getting roughly the same advancement with a few well developed cities as you get with a large number of undeveloped ones. An empire with even a moderate number of moderately developed cities will blow both of them away in science. Purely in terms of science, a new city is almost always worth it unless you don't have the resources to develop it.

Obviously, happiness adds an extra wrinkle to the above analysis but it shouldn't change the overall conclusion. The empire with many cities takes a penalty to happiness per city, but benefits from more luxury resources, local happiness buildings, and social policies that provide happiness per city. The maximum potential population allowed by happiness should still be greater in the wide empire.

I think it's more to put the brakes on runaway AIs

I agree I hate this new system

Magma_Dragoon said:

I think it's more to put the brakes on runaway AIs

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I agree, I just don't have much to contribute about the purpose of the change. I was merely trying to show that the mechanical effect of the change is not as limiting as it appears to be at first glance.

Absolutely, the only kind of expansion that this penalty really punishes is the city diarrhea settler pooping kind that only late vanilla or g+k Hiawatha could pull off.

Magma_Dragoon said:

Absolutely, the only kind of expansion that this penalty really punishes is the city diarrhea settler pooping kind that only late vanilla or g+k Hiawatha could pull off.

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Ha, I will try not to see this mental image every time I encounter Hiawatha from now on, but the probability of success is not favorable.

Yep, this change doesn't affect the player that much. It's for the AI's like Hiawatha who settle garbage cities in the snow that only has a fish resource in the coast... a player would not settle in such locations.

Settle a new and a quality city location. build the granary, water mill and hospital (if applicable,) and build a library, and then it won't be long until that +5% tech cost is insignificant, and your overall tech speed is much more productive with the new city.

I wouldn't mind per se, but it's now that just everything is against wide empires or just natural expansion. Science wise everything beyond the fifth city or so becomes practically pretty much useless (or even a drag).

CountAccountant said:

People make a big deal about the penalty because it's easy to think "If I found another city, my science will be slower," but the math doesn't really work that way. More cities still means faster advancement unless the extra cities are just left underdeveloped.

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True, but the actual profit you get after the fifth or sixth city or so is pretty much zero. It's not worth the effort just for the sake of science. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503273

In GnK, settling new cities after turn 120-150 wasn't recommended. In BNW, late game expansion got even worse. And I personally hate it.

For example, I want to be encouraged to settle good island spots after Astronomy. Right now I find a good spot, sit on +20 happiness and don't do anything about it.

I kinda like the new pacing of the game but tall Tradition still is complete easy-mode compared to wide.

Mercurio said:

True, but the actual profit you get after the fifth or sixth city or so is pretty much zero. It's not worth the effort just for the sake of science. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503273

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In terms of science not. But considering other benefits:
- Moar raw culture, and cultural defense.
- Possible moar tourism with landmarks.
- More production for worlds fair.
- More gold with city connection.
- More luxes, and strategic.
- Posibility of attracting more trade routes.
- Posibility of atracting moar warmongers... oh wait.

This is not conected to science, but something to have in mind before saying that poor wide have everything worse.

Mercurio said:

I wouldn't mind per se, but it's now that just everything is against wide empires or just natural expansion. Science wise everything beyond the fifth city or so becomes practically pretty much useless (or even a drag).

True, but the actual profit you get after the fifth or sixth city or so is pretty much zero. It's not worth the effort just for the sake of science. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503273

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That is the point .... You should not be settling/conquering new cities to increase your science rate (beyond~6-10). You should settle/conquer new cities because
1. The location has something you want
2. The location will be super productive
3. You want to take it from your opponent

The advantage of super wide is that it involves crushing all your foes... (And it does give you more unit production capabilities)

evilcat said:

In terms of science not. But considering other benefits:
- Moar raw culture, and cultural defense.
- Possible moar tourism with landmarks.
- More production for worlds fair.
- More gold with city connection.
- More luxes, and strategic.
- Posibility of attracting more trade routes.
- Posibility of atracting moar warmongers... oh wait.

This is not conected to science, but something to have in mind before saying that poor wide have everything worse.

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Yeah it's not all worse. However it's not just a brake on science either.

-There's ofcourse the increased social policy cost.
-Cities are generally a bit less developped than when you play tall (or develop slower at least). Underdevelopped cities are a complete drag and and either drag along for awhile or you spend loads of gold which could be better spent elsewhere to powerboost it. Aside from that even if you go wide and build multiple cities you'll want main cities to grow as tall as possible due to the way the 5% increase works. The effort it takes to grow tall makes it hard to combine with wide strategies.
-Puppets are completely uncontrollable and will not always prioritize science, which makes them a drag for a long time and can make them useless.
-When tourism hits it hits hapiness at a minimum per city. Now there's some great ideology policies to counter it, which you may reach rather slowly due to increased policy costs.
-Tourism may be generated via landmarks, but mostly due to great works. They're not generated faster whatsoever in wide than in tall. Landmarks are also availlable at arround the same time as Industrialization so you may not have them yet at the moment when you need to counter the tall player's tourism.
-The nr. 1 spot in the world fair is a great defense mechanism, but it's only for one player. Can't rely on it in multiplay.
-You can be richer when growing wide, but instead of focussing production with those cities you'll need to focus gold and trading posts. This is great when you get far into the rationality tree, but for early expansion just absolutely terrible. Early expansion is just a no due to lack of income with limited trade routes and no trade posts availlable yet or not worth it yet.
-More gold from increased city connections isn't exactly a huge ammount...

Yes most of those can be countered. However the effort and gold it takes to expand just is not worth it at all when you could spend the time, gold and units on other things (such as growing tall and getting policies/tenets). Wide early expansion is limited due to lack of gold and happines, expansion later on is limited due to it not being worth the effort anymore.

The solution the way I see it is to either do away with the 5% increase on beaker cost OR make it so that wide can easier access some social policies or ideological tenets as there are some great counters in there. I don't know how, perhaps count a city average or something as culture output instead of a flat cultural increase.

KrikkitTwo said:

That is the point .... You should not be settling/conquering new cities to increase your science rate (beyond~6-10). You should settle/conquer new cities because
1. The location has something you want
2. The location will be super productive
3. You want to take it from your opponent

The advantage of super wide is that it involves crushing all your foes... (And it does give you more unit production capabilities)

Click to expand...

And why should you not? Countries historically wanted to expand. Expansion is also what makes 4x games fun in my opinion. It's personal opinion, but I find the game to be very passive now where I just select a bit what new unit or building I want and not really do much else after the early game where I expanded to about 5 cities. Now you just don't expand beyond the 6th or so city unless you find a strong natural wonder or something. It's just not worth it.