C2C - Civics Discussion Thread

Yudishtira said:

Can we please fix the ridiculous 12-city limit on Monarchy (Government civic)? The Romans, the Russians and Kublai - to name a few - had nowhere near that much trouble keeping their empires together. Back when there was no other unhappiness in the mod it might have been all very well, but it's totally and completely ludicrous now.

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But the Romans used many was to keep the people happy too like Coliseums, Hippodromes and Pubic Baths.

From a game balance point of view this really helps gradually remove retrains of your empire as you advance. First with the Tribe allowing more cities to be founded. Then Settlers at Sedentary Lifestyle, and then each Civic letting a little more and a little more.

Hydromancerx said:

But the Romans used many was to keep the people happy too like Coliseums, Hippodromes and Pubic Baths.

From a game balance point of view this really helps gradually remove retrains of your empire as you advance. First with the Tribe allowing more cities to be founded. Then Settlers at Sedentary Lifestyle, and then each Civic letting a little more and a little more.

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If you have a (roughly) 50-city civ like Rome did, you realize that's 38s worth of buildings/resources you need, right, before even starting to deal with unhappiness from actual valid sources?

Each civic allowing a little more is simply not the case: you get Monarchy in classical or early medieval, and don't get Democracy until very late Renaissance at the earliest (in my case lateish Industrial). All the civics in the meantime (Monarchy, Republic, Theocracy) have the same 12-city limit.

Maybe someday the modders will understand the foolishness of City Limits by Civic and Why it will always be a broken concept. Eventually you have to realize that if it doesn't work cut it out of the mod no matter How Much as a modder you Think it's a good idea.

JosEPh

Or just play with the option off as I do. I don't see the need.

After pax romana fell apart in the third century AD the romans actually had a very though time keeping the empire together. And it's massive size was a big part of the problem. Inflation was going through the roof, there were alot of civil wars and succession wars, pretenders, various divisions of the empire into smaller more manegeable empires that could not stay peaceful because they all wanted the entire realm for themselves. And ofcourse the "barbarians" in the north and the persians in the east were taking full advantage of this. Keeping this empire together was no walk in the park and it ultimately failed.

About city limits, I think there should be some happiness penalties for having many cities, something that is usually compensated by more cities giving you more happiness resources and connected buildings. But not particularly from civics, more in general. And I'd go by era instead of civics. So you have some mathematical number sequence. Perhaps square numbers 1,4,9,16,25 and so on. In the prehistoric era you would get one unhappiness after your 4th city, two unhappy after your 9th e.t.c. Then as the new era comes along it now requires say 50% more cities to get the penalty so your first unhappy from this is after your 6th city and two unhappy faces when you have 14 or more cities. And it could be map specified too. So on tiny maps it starts on say 50% of the number sequence. Thus, 1,2,5,8,14 e.t.c. These figures are just to present the idea, what number sequence to use and with what % to modify it for mapsize and era progression is something that needs to be carefully balanced.

Also this could open up for wonders potentially ignoring the penalty in a city (The Pantheon perhaps?) Or add an era or two in the calculations (I'm thinking The Forbidden city as a world wonder).

JosEPh_II said:

Maybe someday the modders will understand the foolishness of City Limits by Civic and Why it will always be a broken concept. Eventually you have to realize that if it doesn't work cut it out of the mod no matter How Much as a modder you Think it's a good idea.

JosEPh

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Except it works great for me and the ai in the games I play. Although the recent problem with the ai not growing any more is a problem.

Thunderbrd said:

Or just play with the option off as I do. I don't see the need.

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Reduction in coding alone would be enough.

And we've already had attempted end arounds to the option being Off, Blue Genies contribution at v35 release is the latest prime example.

But you can keep your blinders on if you wish.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Reduction in coding alone would be enough.

And we've already had attempted end arounds to the option being Off, Blue Genies contribution at v35 release is the latest prime example.

But you can keep your blinders on if you wish.

JosEPh

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There's some vast differences of opinion here so I don't think it would be right to yank it all out for those who appreciate the limits.

I personally feel that there should be limits (well... penalties that can be gradually reduced anyhow), but that those should be heavily enforced by economy crushing maintenance costs as you go further and further beyond those boundaries (like it is in Vanilla where I've on multiple occasions tried the city spreading approach you and Koshling are using in our multiplayer games and have found it to be highly detrimental - which I quite liked because it asked the player to strike a balance rather than grow as fast as they possibly can.)

I just don't like arbitrary limitations is all and city limits feels like that to me. I suppose it probably isn't toooo horrible since its a soft limit and enforces unhappiness (which doesn't make a lot of sense to me anyhow) rather than absolutely not allowing the breach of those limits.

Indeed. Personally I think the limits are not strong enough. But we already debated this to where we compromised where it has less cities (which I am in favor of), but a soft limit (which I am not thrilled with).

With a hard limit people said it was way to limiting and with too many cities it makes it so the limits never get reached and it might as well have no limits. Thus defeating the purpose of balancing it.

This is why it is the way it is. Not because someone just made it that way but because we came to this conclusion over many, MANY debates.

EDIT: I still wish there was an optional setting for the hard limit. I having a limited number of cities you can build allows the slower civs to still gain territory since the wining civs cannot do land grabs on everything. It also means that some space is left for hunting longer.

Hydromancerx said:

Indeed. Personally I think the limits are not strong enough. But we already debated this to where we compromised where it has less cities (which I am in favor of), but a soft limit (which I am not thrilled with).

With a hard limit people said it was way to limiting and with too many cities it makes it so the limits never get reached and it might as well have no limits. Thus defeating the purpose of balancing it.

This is why it is the way it is. Not because someone just made it that way but because we came to this conclusion over many, MANY debates.

EDIT: I still wish there was an optional setting for the hard limit. I having a limited number of cities you can build allows the slower civs to still gain territory since the wining civs cannot do land grabs on everything. It also means that some space is left for hunting longer.

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At the end of the debate, at least one of Monarchy or Republic had a limit of 30 cities. You capriciously slashed that limit to 12 some time later, with no discussion whatsoever. And this was just when the new pests and crimes etc. were introduced, which raised the bar of unavoidable unhappiness by 10-20 notches. Unhappiness has now been raised into an issue by other means.

I agree with you on the optional hard limit. I would never play with a hard limit, but nor would I ever remove an option. What would it take to resurrect it?

Where the limits definitely aren't strong enough is after Rep Dem - where there are no limits. Do we agree on that?

Yudishtira said:

At the end of the debate, at least one of Monarchy or Republic had a limit of 30 cities. You capriciously slashed that limit to 12 some time later, with no discussion whatsoever. And this was just when the new pests and crimes etc. were introduced, which raised the bar of unavoidable unhappiness by 10-20 notches. Unhappiness has now been raised into an issue by other means.

I agree with you on the optional hard limit. I would never play with a hard limit, but nor would I ever remove an option. What would it take to resurrect it?

Where the limits definitely aren't strong enough is after Rep Dem - where there are no limits. Do we agree on that?

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During the debate there was an argument about Republic and Monarchy having different sizes such as 12 vs 20 and eventually when Theocracy was added that fell in line with Monarchy.

Thu the compromise was to have all 3 of these be equal number but scaled down to the lower number for balance. Since having the base number be 30 was WAY too much. You might as well have given those no limits if it was 30.

Pests and crime are a separate issue and have been added in different clusters over the years. First Flammability, then Crime, and so on with more crimes, pests and stuff added gradually. Meanwhile lots of other happiness buildings and other counter balance buildings have been added too.

In short we had a VERY long time where was never an issue and if you had an city then it was because it was like size 230 or something insane like that. Heck even recently (last month) voskhod had some good ideas about making crimes more potent and adding more so cities could actually get some .

Another thing (that hasn't been considered) is that with "Natural Religion Spread" or whatever it's called, you can easily have more religions in your city than population. I have 50 in several cities from non-state religion penalty, which was also introduced around the same time. I can't find anything in the civics screen to explain why it is three per non-state religion, so I guess that's one more thing we have no control over now (correct me if I'm wrong).

Why you hording all the religions?

Yudishtira said:

Another thing (that hasn't been considered) is that with "Natural Religion Spread" or whatever it's called, you can easily have more religions in your city than population. I have 50 in several cities from non-state religion penalty, which was also introduced around the same time. I can't find anything in the civics screen to explain why it is three per non-state religion, so I guess that's one more thing we have no control over now (correct me if I'm wrong).

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I'll say this not having experienced this as a problem in my games yet but it's interesting... gives a reason to use inquisitors for once (aside from trying to win a cheesy victory type (I figure any victory but conquest is cheesy.)))

Thunderbrd said:

I'll say this not having experienced this as a problem in my games yet but it's interesting... gives a reason to use inquisitors for once (aside from trying to win a cheesy victory type (I figure any victory but conquest is cheesy.)))

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Be careful here, as this can lead to greatly reducing those other "cheesy" victory conditions that "others" like to use. Just as Cultural and Religious Victory conditions were diminished long ago in this mod.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Be careful here, as this can lead to greatly reducing those other "cheesy" victory conditions that "others" like to use. Just as Cultural and Religious Victory conditions were diminished long ago in this mod.

JosEPh

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Don't want to go too far off topic, but the only thing I can see that's hard about winning cultural is, trying not to win domination before you do. I will have 3 phenomenal cities by turn 1000/3060 on Marathon/Large (that will be early Modern), but of course I won domination ages ago. Still, if my huge empire can do it by turn 1000, an empire half the size (ie. below the domination limit) can surely do it long before the turns run out.

Religious victory is another matter, though. Very, very broken, I agree.

Thunderbrd said:

I'll say this not having experienced this as a problem in my games yet but it's interesting... gives a reason to use inquisitors for once (aside from trying to win a cheesy victory type (I figure any victory but conquest is cheesy.)))

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Yeah but to get inquisitors, I would have to stop non state-religion spread altogether everywhere. Needless to say, I choose not to do that. I want to keep getting more monasteries, revivalist churches and cathedrals to build, why wouldn't I?

And that's what's wrong with the 12-city limit. If I had not given myself a higher limit, I would be forced into Divine Cult or Intolerant forever ie. until the industrial revolution, or would have to hope I was not successful enough to expand to more than 20 or so cities. And if the AI was dominating me, it would hit this limit obviously much much harder than a human player would.

JosEPh_II said:

Be careful here, as this can lead to greatly reducing those other "cheesy" victory conditions that "others" like to use. Just as Cultural and Religious Victory conditions were diminished long ago in this mod.

JosEPh

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I've not seen anyone take any shots at TRYING to 'diminish' these options but they may have been by default of not being updated to new environments of play. I wouldn't know ... don't play them (but I don't have a problem with anyone else enjoying them.)

Yudishtira said:

Yeah but to get inquisitors, I would have to stop non state-religion spread altogether everywhere. Needless to say, I choose not to do that. I want to keep getting more monasteries, revivalist churches and cathedrals to build, why wouldn't I?

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Because it's making your cities too unhappy to do so? I think it's a blessed frustration. The game shouldn't be so easy to determine 'best practices' as it often is don't you think?

And that's what's wrong with the 12-city limit. If I had not given myself a higher limit, I would be forced into Divine Cult or Intolerant forever ie. until the industrial revolution, or would have to hope I was not successful enough to expand to more than 20 or so cities. And if the AI was dominating me, it would hit this limit obviously much much harder than a human player would.

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Hard to say... in some ways the civic and tech evaluations the AI does are far superior here than in any other Civ IV outlet imo. It's just the strategic part that sucks and needs majorly addressing.

(Don't take that as for or against the rest of what you say though. I'm neutral on city limit matters since again, I don't play with it.)

With city limits for happiness turned off Chiefdom really becomes redundant. Playing a game just hitting the end of Prehistoric period, have 5 cities.

Saved my game and then out of curiosity switched from Anarchism to Chiefdom- My science dropped to 0% and even then I was -5 :gold each turn.

Either weaken Anarchism or give something to Chiefdom to make it worthwhile IMO

@MacCoise,

I raised questions to Blue Genie and modders while BG's Test thread was going but got nothing but backlash as I expected. (I can be a Hard critic.) But you are seeing now what I tried to say then. And to boot I got Blue Genie mad enough at me to leave the forum, which was Not my intention. But I do point out things that don't fit or play well. And this is one of them.

BG's system should Not have been implemented without further playtesting, no matter how well presented. It could've been put in After the last release version and had a wider test base. But if you can post well, show some math skills, and be persistent you can get things added in rather quickly without a solid test base.

JosEPh