Negative Feedback Mechanisms in Civ5

Civ5 doesn't seem to have the negative feedback mechanisms that kept former civs more interesting I feel.

For example, the happiness system. Each additional city costs a fixed 3 happiness. However, with other civs, generally each additional city resulted in an increasing penalty, so it was much tougher to maintain a large empire, and small civs could sometimes still compete.

Worse still is the tech system. Before, staying the tech leader was tough, as civs behind could tech trade to stay in touch. However, with research agreements, instead of more helping those civs who are behind in tech (which would make sense I think from a realism and gameplay viewpoint) they give just as much, if not more science to the leading civ, expanding their lead. Combining this with the fact that research agreements are a fixed price regardless of tech rate and potential benefit further makes it tougher for small civs.

As a result, I find it hard to find a difficulty that makes it an interesting game. Either I get thrashed, barely able to stay alive and completely out-teched, or the opposite happens.

Are there any map settings/mods that I can get that balance the game a bit and add some negative feedback factors so I can actually play games into the 1900s at least, without having to hold myself back?

Here's some suggestions I'd like:

(1) Instead of adding a flat 3 unhappiness per city, perhaps make it 0, then 1, 2, etc. Up to 7 cities, unhappiness will be the same or less, but then after that unhappiness will be above the status quo. This will be a brake on larger civs. You could play with the exact numbers, but this is the idea.
(2) Research agreements give science based on the opponent's research only, not your own. There should be no caps based on own science level, so low teching civs could stay in touch with research agreements and not end up in the dark ages.

clinton said:

Civ5 doesn't seem to have the negative feedback mechanisms that kept former civs more interesting I feel.

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They're there.

For example, the happiness system. Each additional city costs a fixed 3 happiness. However, with other civs, generally each additional city resulted in an increasing penalty, so it was much tougher to maintain a large empire, and small civs could sometimes still compete.

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Small civs can still compete.

Social policies scale exponentially based on the number of cities you have. A large empire is not going to get many SP's. Also, several of the policies are geared more towards small empires (Tradition & Freedom in particular).

Also, National Wonders increase in cost based on the number of cities you have. Very large empires may not find it efficient to build them, making them much more viable for small empires.

Worse still is the tech system. Before, staying the tech leader was tough, as civs behind could tech trade to stay in touch. However, with research agreements, instead of more helping those civs who are behind in tech (which would make sense I think from a realism and gameplay viewpoint) they give just as much, if not more science to the leading civ, expanding their lead. Combining this with the fact that research agreements are a fixed price regardless of tech rate and potential benefit further makes it tougher for small civs.

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Catching up in tech is much easier with G&K due to the Espionage mechanic, which lets other civs quickly steal simpler technologies.

Research Agreements do scale in cost, due to the most advanced era of the two partners. If you are playing with other humans, the simple solution is to not sign RA's with the tech leader. If you are playing with AI's, they require additional gold for each era ahead you are.

Halcyan2 said:

Also, several of the policies are geared more towards small empires (Tradition & Freedom in particular).

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Is Freedom geared towards small empires?

25% Great People generation, more food, less unhappiness, +2 culture per world wonder, higher combat strength for cities, free units, longer golden ages and double GP yields all seem geared towards all civs.

When I first heard about research agreements, I thought the way it would work would be that two civs get together and decide "Let's research Navigation together". Therefore, you would research it quicker because you combined your resources and effort.

Instead, a research agreement could mean I end up with navigation and somebody else gets banking. It's not really logical.

Surely, if 2 civs worked together to research the same tech would be a better way of doing it, and would prevent 1 civ from running away with a tech lead (although if there were 2 civs in the lead, they could stretch their collective lead further).

Play with espionage enabled? The farther behind a civ is in tech from the person they're spying on, the faster they tech steal. If you're behind 2 nations with 2 spies going and you're actively trying to catch up, you will far faster than if you were just building universities, etc.

Also-small empires can't compete? Small empires are straight up better for 1/2 victory conditions. It's impossible to go for culture with a large empire, you MUST be small, and it's far easier to win a diplo victory with a small, focused empire than it is with a large one getting into wars and getting in peoples' faces.

Now, religions, science and war obviously favor larger empires. So if you play that way, yeah, that's the way to go about it. But small isn't necessarily worse.

I find diplo much easier with a large and very aggressive empire: it's much easier to raise the cash needed to buy off city states that way (cash scales with size and aggression)
The only good thing about being small is that it's usually easier to remain friends to sign research agreements (AI's get easily pissed at expansionists)

The flat per-city happiness penalty really is a negative feedback mechanism of the sort you describe because cities don't generate resources, population does. Building a lot of cities will let you grow faster and get more people overall, but because they'll be spread over a larger number of smaller cities each paying the 3 happiness cost the happiness cost-per-population is higher for the larger empire. Additionally, because of the greater number of smaller cities you're either paying more in building maintenance or have less developed cities the productivity per population is lower.

I don't think I would say science favors large empires either. A 3-6 city empire works really well for science. More like it is size neutral.

I would say different sized empires being viable is one of the things they did a lot better in 5 than 4. It was quite easy for cities to pay for themselves in 4 so there was really no limit to how much you could grow and keep getting stronger until you hit the city limit.


And yeah, espionage is the trick to catching up on tech. You're right that in vanilla there really wasn't a good tech catchup mechanism. There's a small tech cost reduction based on how many people you know who already have the tech but unfortunately it's pretty weak in that role and acts more strongly as a reward for early exploration than anything else.


It sounds like what you're concerned about is the AI's ability to expand endlessly without paying any apparent price for it. It turns out that a happiness penalty is not really going to fix that anyway. The AI gets so much happiness that even at low difficulties they have tons of extra. You would feel the pinch of increased happiness costs long before they ever did. You might consider working on your military tactics. A very small army with good tactics can hold back AI aggression on ~difficulty level 5 without costing much. At that difficulty the AI starts to be capable of winning the game itself so you might find that more interesting.

Rationalism policy tree is your friend if you're doing a small empire. Just make sure you have your culture-buildings in place before then, assign all your art-specialists that you can, and enjoy!

Playing at higher difficulties, I always find myself falling horribly behind the AI until the Renaissance (usually close to last place in tech), when I get access to spies and the rationalism tree at the same time. I am usually the first or second civ to reach the modern era, and always the first to the atomic/information eras.

I think that's the main "problem" with tech balance in G&K... your mains sources of tech (universities w/ jungle; rationalism tree; spies) all come at the same time in history. It's probably historically accurate, but it's almost as if all that early stuff doesn't matter a lick. Whether I play tall or wide, aggressive or passive, the gameflow feels the same. Doesn't matter which civ I use, whether I go tall/wide, or which victory condition I go for.

clinton said:

Civ5 doesn't seem to have the negative feedback mechanisms that kept former civs more interesting I feel.

For example, the happiness system. Each additional city costs a fixed 3 happiness. However, with other civs, generally each additional city resulted in an increasing penalty, so it was much tougher to maintain a large empire, and small civs could sometimes still compete.

Click to expand...

This part is more of a penalty for excessive tightness of cities. If your new city has a unique luxury (that wouldn't evenually be within another of your cities range), that +4 will more than offset the -3.
Even if its a duplicate copy, you may be able to sell the luxury for 240 gold every 30 turns which you can use to help cash rush happiness structures. Strategic resources you aren't using can also be sold.

Worse still is the tech system. Before, staying the tech leader was tough, as civs behind could tech trade to stay in touch. However, with research agreements, instead of more helping those civs who are behind in tech (which would make sense I think from a realism and gameplay viewpoint) they give just as much, if not more science to the leading civ, expanding their lead. Combining this with the fact that research agreements are a fixed price regardless of tech rate and potential benefit further makes it tougher for small civs.

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This is offset in part of the human has enough of a tech lead that they are in the next era when the agreement was signed in that the AI will insist on you including 100 gold on top of the deal.
However, if the AI has the tech lead, they won't pay you that cash and so you are better off finding someone in your own era to make the RA with as the game charges more in later eras.

As a result, I find it hard to find a difficulty that makes it an interesting game. Either I get thrashed, barely able to stay alive and completely out-teched, or the opposite happens.

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You may be giving up too soon (unless you were in danger of being overrun); at high enough difficulty levels, its always AI takes a huge lead early and the human crawls back and takes the lead at some point and never looks back in all versions of civ.

Are there any map settings/mods that I can get that balance the game a bit and add some negative feedback factors so I can actually play games into the 1900s at least, without having to hold myself back?

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Some standard mods for Civ V are: Unaltered Game Play (that actually just makes it easier to know what's going on); VEM, and GEM. These two have a combination of reducing AI handicaps given [but improving AI gameplay] and also instead of going for giving the AI huge starting bonuses that fade give the AI smaller bonuses early that grow.

Here's some suggestions I'd like:

(1) Instead of adding a flat 3 unhappiness per city, perhaps make it 0, then 1, 2, etc. Up to 7 cities, unhappiness will be the same or less, but then after that unhappiness will be above the status quo. This will be a brake on larger civs. You could play with the exact numbers, but this is the idea.

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That would be a very big change for Civ V:
I'm going to assume you really intend the number to be world size dependent and 7 to be on huge maps; translates down to 4 on small (and smaller); 5 on standard; 6 on large.
Would probably turn Liberty back into the first tree everybody picks since this will make optimum play an early REX; by the time the free limit is up, you probably have enough luxuries for the rest of the cities your going to found.

(2) Research agreements give science based on the opponent's research only, not your own. There should be no caps based on own science level, so low teching civs could stay in touch with research agreements and not end up in the dark ages.

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Under current game play, they would be: Under that rule no one is going to want to sign an RA with someone behind them.