Are the Penalties of Going wide and going to war too much?

What do you think of the below 3 new changes in Civ V that limited war and wide play?

  • Yes, I frequently am annoyed at these features

    Votes: 31 63.3%
  • I don't mind them

    Votes: 18 36.7%

  • Total voters
    49
  • Poll closed .
To go back to the original question, I voted no, I don't mind them. While a feature designed to limit expansion and growth is always going to be a bit annoying, I think global happiness is, at this point, a relatively well executed system and an important part of game balance.

I do think that tall empires are too strong relative to wide ones, but I don't think it's because global happiness and science/culture penalties penalize wide empires too heavily- wide empires should be somewhat difficult to manage. I think it's because there aren't any real drawbacks to not expanding. Given the strength of Tradition, the importance of an early National College and the effectiveness of internal trade routes, a 4 city Tradition->Rationalism strategy is both the safest, least situational strategy and the fastest, most efficient way of winning the game. If the effectiveness of this strategy were toned down a bit, wide empires would start to seem much more attractive.
 
...I think it's because there aren't any real drawbacks to not expanding...

This is a good point and I had the thought too. I would be likewise satisfied with a balancing solution that gave more of an opportunity cost to "playing it safe". Right now the only opportunity cost most of the game to staying smaller is reduced hammer output. Your kingdom is more defensible, but in a prolonged war you are at a disadvantage. This is really the only disadvantage is war though, because a fast tall game is typically ending by the time a comparable wide empire is surpassing them in tech. The reason is there isn't enough happiness to grow your cities very big till ideologies. At least that's my opinion.

Some people would say the hammer advantage is enough to going wide and that it should be more difficult to manage, and I agree, but I'm not so sure it is balanced from a difficulty standpoint. It takes a big learning curve to learn to play wide/liberty effectively, including a fair bit of optimization and micromanagement, and it seems you are struggling directly AGAINST features rather than following an alterate gameplay strategy. To overcome the problems you need to monitor your cities, keep on top of local happiness, avoid growth frequently, predict future balance, buy more buildings, defend much more effectively, need a larger military, etc. From what I hear from the average players starting to try to learn to play wide it is not intuitive or easy for them to pick up for this reason. So yeah, for us that have played a lot both styles of play feel balanced (my complaints are more that I can't technically REX even micromanaging, but in the range of 10-15 cities liberty feels pretty good), but you have to admit going wide takes a LOT more skill and I'm sure it could have been designed to be more intuitive so newer players see the benefits and learn the play without having to ask for a walkthrough on the forums. I've seen so many players complain that they are deadlocked into playing small due to the difficulty, failed attempts at wide, and the fact that tradition is so tempting due to the fast early bonuses.

In my opinion technical balance is less important then gameplay. This game needs to feel good to all levels of players not just experienced ones. They could have made wider play more accessible to new players by

a) making liberty have comparable early bonuses so the opportunity cost of choosing one tree over the other is less. Liberty is great but you have to quickly settle and get many cities before you see it. Due to happiness and other issues most players don't expand fast enough to see how good it is so many players call it "weak" even though it technically isn't. Liberty gives the tools to expand rapidly and build infrastructure but the gold and happiness you need to do it that fast are buried down at the end. It should have been reversed in my opinion. Most players expand when they have the happiness and money to do so thus it is not loved.

b) rather than always harsh penalties per new city, something, even something small, that got better with each city would be a nice opportunity cost to not expanding. Right now the only initial thing that gets better is a new city to produce stuff. They've taken away all the other bonuses till you can surpass the penalties which with science can happen relatively quickly if you have money to buy the buildings, but for culture takes awhile. Since most new cities are building loads of buildings for many turns this hammer advantage doesn't feel that useful and again, the benefits are deferred for most of the game. Tiny newer cities rarely have the capacity to produce military units quickly or do something useful till built up and it's the building up part that new players have trouble with as it is, admittedly slow and made slower by needing to build happiness building frequently to grow it to a decent enough size it is useful.

The one main early advantage to new cities is Extra sellable resources/luxes does this, and it's basically the only way liberty can get the money to support itself early till the advanced monetary buildings (banks+), but that's a bit convoluted and newer players sometimes don't realize this and go into financial red and struggle with growth. I personally think a really nice and realistic balance to give liberty would be BETTER gold options than tradition. It makes sense. Large empires should be wealthier. City connections can do this to a small extent but usually they just barely cover all the maintenance costs on buildings. Something in liberty that either 1) made maintenance cheaper with more cities or 2) generated more gold given a larger empire would be very balanced and good gameplay. You have to buy/support so much more in liberty it really should have more money and this is realistically what would happen as well. A way to do this would be to make trade routes a function of number of cities. Maybe for every 4 cities you build you get an extra trade route. Makes sense and solves the gold problem. Might make liberty too easy for us pros but it's be just about perfect to addressing a big liberty issue for the average player. More cities/population should realistically translate to more trade and tax income. I don't think it should ever be the case that the tall player can generate as much money as the wide.

c) A bit off-topic but another thing that would address liberty problems would be if new pop 1 cities did not affect the science/culture/#cities penalties until they grew to size 2-3 or so. Size 1-2 cities are not very useful so it isn't too unbalanced and allows you to fill in your land a bit better with smaller towns on "avoid growth". also it makes it so that the settling penalties are delayed till you actually try to do something with the city giving you time to connect luxuries and a bit more freedom to manage. New players could settle easier, taking advantage of that early space and cheap settlers, and deal with the penalties with a bit more time rather than going into major unhappiness immediately which tends to force new players to NOT capitalize on the liberty bonuses. Being able to produce many tiny 1-2 population cities is not terrible helpful as they are usually producing less then they cost at this stage, plus they are extremely vulnerable to military invasion and are conquered quickly so I don't think it would be OP delaying the penalties till the city grew once. It's like the logic that every new hamlet shouldn't cost the government money but once it registers as a town and is receiving maintenance support from the crown, then it matters.

What do you guys think?
 
If we're working on balancing liberty, we could also work on balancing honor and piety. Imagine how much more fun the game would be with four viable different opening strategies.
Of course, what you say about liberty already being balanced if not superior for competent players is true. Imagine if liberty was even more buffed, with early fixes for its only two weaknesses immediately available? It would throw off the game's entire balance. Even brand new players will go wide. I remember always going liberty right off the start even when the game first came out, vanilla, just because it said "BIGGER empires" and I was coming from Civ IV.
Adding "balance" to any specific policy tree usually ends up throwing off the entire game's balance; you'll find tradition and liberty to be far more balanced in practicality than they may seem in a sterile, experimental environment. Even some piety strategies are viable if played right. A piety liberty split can sometimes make sense in the right context, as can a tradition honor.

But I agree with you saying liberty can only be played right with experience and training, and that certain things might make it more accessible to new players without making it ridiculously overpowered.
 
yeah if rebalanced it should be subtle. I personally think the happiness is fine but was thinking if meritocracy came earlier and another one like the worker speed was traded lower it might be more intuitive to play for less experienced players. Giving them an earlier way to get happiness and making the tree progress a bit faster due to reduced policy cost.

As far as piety, I personally think piety is balanced and fairly intuitive in the bonuses it gives and the way it plays. I wasn't under the impression you would ever open purely with piety but that it's a supporting tree that you choose second or mixed in if you want a good religion game and I frequently mix it with a liberty start. Religious games are usually supporting role not the primary strategy, but I guess that could change, dunno how it would be done though.

I'd be interested in hearing your suggestions for honor though! I'll admit I kinda forgot about honor, I've never tried to open with it in a real game, but it looks solid for early war. What are the main weaknesses, just the lack of culture maybe?
 
Yes lack of culture and poor focus. 15% bonus to production of units is kind of small, maybe a turn per unit. The early general is a pretty big deal though, and the city garrisons are a nice bonus to culture and happiness, but honor doesn't have any real bonuses to growth or production of infrastructure.
 
Could you expand this bit please?

Are you talking about taking attractive cities from an AI, and the consequential diplomacy penalties for warmongering? I agree that the warmongering penalties are an “unmistakable balancing issue”. (But, FWIW, I think the warmongering penalties are actually balanced quite well.) I just don’t see the connection to “punishing someone for spamming out wonders.” You can just as easily be punishing someone for spawning on the continent with you, and “you wind up punishing yourself for winning early wars militarily”. But I think I might be missing something of your point! The rest of your comment is spot on.

You pay in more resources for military than you get in tech and production from just doing 4 city tradition, unless you're really fighting a potato.
 
Yes lack of culture and poor focus. 15% bonus to production of units is kind of small, maybe a turn per unit. The early general is a pretty big deal though, and the city garrisons are a nice bonus to culture and happiness, but honor doesn't have any real bonuses to growth or production of infrastructure.
If you go Honor then *others* are suppose to do growth or production of infrastructure. You don't build, you capture :p

Anyway, for me social policies are NOT strategy or some sort of play style or even rigid MMO character class.

Its a "tool". I pick, use what I need (or think I need). If for example I pick something from Tradition it doesn't mean I will go "Tall Science" coz you know, Tradition is for Tall exclusive.

I mix and match.

...
As far as piety, I personally think piety is balanced and fairly intuitive in the bonuses it gives and the way it plays. I wasn't under the impression you would ever open purely with piety but that it's a supporting tree ...

All social policies are "supporting tree".

Don't need tradition to have big cities. don't need liberty to have many cities, no need for honor to go to war, etc ...
 
I mean it sounds like you're playing at least tradition wrong; most of tradition is rather garbage until the finisher, monarchy and landed elite are alright but people overvalue the non-finisher policies of tradition.
And I suppose you can city spam on tradition but republic and meritocracy are really the only things that make city spamming viable at all. And as to your analysis of honor, relying on others to outdo you in science and production so you can take their cities does not make a lot of sense; what's +15% production on archers when your opponents are pumping out dozens of hammers worth of comp bows every turn?
 
I mean it sounds like you're playing at least tradition wrong; most of tradition is rather garbage until the finisher, monarchy and landed elite are alright but people overvalue the non-finisher policies of tradition.
And I suppose you can city spam on tradition but republic and meritocracy are really the only things that make city spamming viable at all. And as to your analysis of honor, relying on others to outdo you in science and production so you can take their cities does not make a lot of sense; what's +15% production on archers when your opponents are pumping out dozens of hammers worth of comp bows every turn?

Honor is underpowered in vanilla. The idea is to all-in someone using early general (combat bonus) + adjacent unit bonus, then take advantage of the supply of gold from killing units to get units or bring new cities up to speed more quickly...the ideas being that you punish investment into non-military by using military to take it, therefore having both military and economy.

When you're meat-grinding AI units in SP it can work, quickly yielding logistics/ranged shooters with general + extra bonuses on melee attacks that allow you to shred at tech parity. On slower speeds you can win high difficulty maps outright with stuff like horse archers or even elephant archers that way. Sure, your econ sucks and your science is a joke, but it's still something, in contrast with the "nothing" everyone else has.

But when your opponent isn't simply throwing away their units and camps defensively, what are you getting? An inferior source of happiness, slightly better units, and a tremendous hammer disadvantage compared to the liberty units or aqueducts/culture buildings in tradition, plus less growth. If honor wasn't (ironically) hammer starved in terms of producing units early on or had less of an abject disadvantage in growth/science, it would be viable. Or if the stuff you conquered left you with more total stuff than you'd have gotten just settling 4 city trad like the other 34589934 people.

It's probably still better than piety, though :rolleyes:.
 
I'd rather go honor than piety, yeah, and I pretty much second everything you just said. I haven't opened honor with anybody but the Aztecs on raging barbs since I did the Germany challenge thing.

I think the best way to buff honor would be to add other bonuses to barb killing, like maybe camps provide permanent global happiness and a pop ruin effect. It would also do away with keeping barb camps alive on honor.
 
The problem with polls like these is that players play at different difficulties and will approach this question from different experiences. On prince, as far as I remembered, wide was not even that big a deal. It was less optimal than tall, but still very doable. Also, DOWing any Civ meant nothing. I could defend my entire Civ with 4-5 obsolete archers.

With diety, on the other hand, the penalties are just insane. I don't even consider going wide anymore. It basically forces you into one style of play. This was one of the reasons I quit the game before. Going wide, opening honor or piety were far too punishing.

So to answer your question: yes, the penalties are too much.
 
I would not call tradition weak. It looks weak from a late-game, total-effect perspective but it is far superior to any other tree in the early-game benefits. And everyone knows the early-game benefits are what puts you ahead in science and population growth.

The one thing tradition does better than any other trees is make your capital grow tall. +3 culture there, greater border growth so you don't outgrow workable tiles, 1/2 unhappiness there, one extra gold for every 2 population, extra food and multipliers to growth, usually you've finished the monument so it's a free ampitheater before the tech as well, and finally, it gives you a free aqueduct before the tech which saves you 40% of the food to grow.

There is nothing like tradition for making your capital grow sky-high without much of a penalty. So it greatly buffs your capital, gives smaller buffs to the next 3 cities, but nothing after that and no hammer advantage.

I wouldn't say it's weak, you can see why the fastest finish times use tradition, no other tree yields growth that fast. This is actually why some players enjoy mixing tradition and liberty because monarchy can keep their capital large and strong even with fast expansion. If you have a happiness-poor start tradition is your best bet because it may be hard to build more than 4 cities anyway the first 100 turns. After you solve that and begin dipping into liberty you can have a second expansion wave and get the meritocracy, worker, and production bonuses too. Then go commerce if you got really large or rationalism. Commerce is more fun but you can't beat rationalism for a SV.

Some of my most successful wider games used a tradition start. And you don't need to finish it. It really enables you to keep your capital growing (due to monarchy) and get policies up a bit earlier due to the extra culture, and lets you whip out an early NC before the big expansion wave. It's a slower way to do it but it definitely is superior in science output and pacing.
 
I don't think Civ 5 does a good job of balancing wide vs tall. I played over a thousand hours of Civ4 and that game balanced it perfectly. With 6 cities you could compete with an 18 city empire to win the game, but at the same time, going wide was very rewarding and powerful if done properly.

I won't go back to Civ4 and overall I do love Civ5 but if I had to change one thing about the game it would be global happiness. I do not like the global happiness system at all, not at all. Everything about it is terrible. Happiness should not be global and the whole rebel spawn thing is just ridiculous, as is troops getting combat penalties. I play Civ5 with mods because otherwise it's just a complete bore. If you play unmodded, there's zero reason to ever not follow a 4 city tradition strategy. Everything else is strictly inferior.
 
Try the More Cities mod. I've never looked back. What this mod does is get rid of the unhappiness generated by number of cities and increase in culture and technology costs created by number of cities. You're still left with unhappiness from occupied cities, as well as increased production cost for national wonders, but I assume you can handle that much.

also, protectionism, which is a part of the commerce tree is a must for those going wide.

Sounds like a great mod, But I like the Enhanced User Interface and the two don't play together.
 
I don't think Civ 5 does a good job of balancing wide vs tall. I played over a thousand hours of Civ4 and that game balanced it perfectly. With 6 cities you could compete with an 18 city empire to win the game, but at the same time, going wide was very rewarding and powerful if done properly.

I won't go back to Civ4 and overall I do love Civ5 but if I had to change one thing about the game it would be global happiness. I do not like the global happiness system at all, not at all. Everything about it is terrible. Happiness should not be global and the whole rebel spawn thing is just ridiculous, as is troops getting combat penalties. I play Civ5 with mods because otherwise it's just a complete bore. If you play unmodded, there's zero reason to ever not follow a 4 city tradition strategy. Everything else is strictly inferior.

As I pointed out a bit earlier, if you can end the game with an early UU or get close to doing so, you can make a case for something other than tradition 3-4 city opener.

The disincentive to going wide is overdone though. It's not just the happiness; tech cost, culture cost are problematic too and especially early on. I'm not a fan of "win the map outright right now or turtle" being the consistently optimal solutions. Civ IV had so much more decision making there.
 
thanks for everyone's opinions on this thread! I think I've found settings/playstyle that are quite competitive in the REX way I wish to play. Here's what I've discovered, correct me if any of this is wrong:

1. Play on Huge for the best REX game: Not only does the world have every luxury available the penalties per city are much smaller and the AI runs out of steam giving you space to expand for a long time. Reduced penalties are: Culture: 7% penalty per city (means your policy costs double after 14 cities and triple after 29) I find early game with one RB and fast monuments there is almost no slowdown if timed right, Science: 3% (science costs double after 33 cities - easy to manage), unhappiness: 1.8 added per new city.

2. Get a religion with happiness buffs: On immortal RB's may be hard to score but usually something is left like +2 happiness from gardens or temples. Both are very nice and passive way to get earlier local happiness and grow your cities 2 population taller. If a neighbor has even more happiness/culture options in their religion it may be advantageous to let it spread through your empire a while but nothing gets you the benifits faster than founding your own. Also the ceremonial burial and peace-loving founder beliefs are GLOBAL happiness. (This is BIG!) So though it looks weak it bypasses the local happiness cap in cities and directly combats things like city settling penalties allowing every extra smiley to mean more cities!

3. Go liberty and get to meritocracy as quick as possible: Happiness from city connections is a seperate category and I believe from my observations it is AGAIN one of the rare sources of GLOBAL happiness, bypassing the local city cap. You can think of it as transforming that 1.8 unhappiness per founded city to 0.8! That means every unique luxury supports the settling penalty of 5 cities! That's a lot! The -5% unhappiness from citizens in non-occupied is small but it does add up as it is also global and across the board. The effect makes it so that after 20 population a city + city connection bonus a city can actually overcome its settling cost and be purely happiness neutral! (India can do it earlier) Also, make sure to get the early Pyramids. The free workers and faster working will much more quickly connect your empire activating the city connection bonuses and meritocracy. And the GE point often translates into a free Renaissance wonder that may have even more happiness effects!

4. Now that you've minimized the global settling penalties, limit growth and only let cities grow as much as they can support locally in happiness : Exception maybe the capital to keep it competitive and generate good science/trade routes. You can consume the base happiness and a few luxes to keep it growing. Now that every city only has a base unhappiness of 0.8 plus global -5% reduction for population that local happiness cap is not so bad. Production-focus them and avoid growth until you build the circus, a religious building, colosseum, etc. and let it grow by the amount of new happiness each time you finish it. This means you are never wasting happiness with the local cap. This is where different civs or a religion really shine. Any with extra early happiness buildings means every city can grow that much taller. Celts for instance, I find can keep growing very, very well and get taller cities quite quickly that stay neutral.

5. Find and at least befriend mercantile CS (usually pretty easy): Focus on friending all the ones you know as priority. Each one gives +3 happiness to your GLOBAL happiness meaning an additional 4 cities almost. And keeping friend status is a lot easier and more certain then ally status. But, if they ask for a lucky quest being friends can easily mean you jump up to ally and mercantile CS contain 1 unique luxury and often a 2nd as well. It can make a HUGE difference, though don't rely on keeping more than 1 mercantile ally in the beginning as it is an uncertain source of happiness.

6. Forget rationalism, make commerce your second priority: Commerce fixes the lack of early gold problem that the liberty tree has and gets you a lot more gold for your wide empire. This means cash-buying loads of infrastructure, keeping CS allies, etc! It will help a lot in science by giving science from trading posts and allowing you to instantly cash-buy many science buildings to keep up so it makes a nice 2nd choice for science behind rationalism as well. If you get to the end it also transforms every unique lux you have into 6 happiness (50% more) meaning your empire can grow even wider or start to grow tall at this point.

7. Hit or miss, but finding the Natural wonders early means an extra 1 global happiness each which covers the settling penalties of 1 new city each time. If you can score them in-borders several generate happiness just by being in your territory. I never really prioritized exploring or finding them as the effect seemed small but on huge/wide it can make a difference finding them early and there are a LOT in the world!

8. It can be hard to ensure you take them on high difficulties but certain wonders are very nice. Any that provide happiness are global sources, which directly support more cities. A favorite of many wide players is Notre Dame with the highest bonus happiness in the game. AI beeline it on immortal and higher but if timed properly your Great Engineer from the pyramids might take it for free. Another amazing wonder for wide is the Forbidden Palace. It can be huge, reducing unhappiness -10% across the board. With meritocracy you're now talking a global -15% reduction which means cities can overcome the settling penalties and be happiness neutral and supporting yourself in happiness in every city by population 6-7. If you get both I imagine you could literally ICS forever like the old days but I've never managed it on immortal yet. Will try next game! If you get through liberty fast and are not yet medieval opening patronage to build this wonder and get a reduced -25% decay in CS friends/allies can really help. If nothing else that reduced rate gives you the edge in keeping allies and friends.

9. Ideologies hit after this meaning loads of local happiness sources: After commerce the timing should be just about perfect to open ideologies. All of them immediately give a lot more local happiness meaning your entire empire can start to grow tall. Order has many local happiness sources and is my choice for a peaceful commercial wide empire. Go autocracy if you are warring frequently at this point as it has the same, if not more sources if you are capturing cities. Either way your wide, powerful empire is now free to grow into a monster of production, science, and culture. Have not tested, but the 1/2 unhappiness from specialists may beat the local happiness cap. I'm not sure. If it does, this means every specialist needs only 0.5 happiness meaning you can again, possibly generate more happiness then could otherwise be supported locally and export it to other cities. As in wide empires the cities are more crowded they are often running specialists by pop 10 or so so it could work. It all depends on if that happiness beats the local cap. If it doesn't it will still help your empire grow tall though.
Civs good at this strategy:

Rome: going wide with Rome is very nice. They don't directly help with happiness but legions can duel as defense/deterrance, early warring, and road-build to take the pressure off your workers. Due to the 25% reduction in cost for buildings in Rome the nation is perfect for easily getting every happiness building along the way quickly without distracting from other infrastructure. All in all you can build a strong wide empire much faster with them and it is even better if they have ivory/horses/stone near the capital as you'll get the circus/stone-works/stable discounts forever after.

India: A fairly well-known fact. India doubles city founding penalties but halves population penalty. On huge map this means 3.6 unhappiness base (2.6 after meritocracy). It may seem bad, but every city you make will grow nearly twice as tall. They are able to competitively keep up in science as a result. On huge they do very, very well as a result. They would be even more OP but their local city happiness cap is adjusted to 66% per citizen meaning that 1 local happiness doesn't directly translate into 2 citizens. However, I find their ability still enables some interesting things. The math says that due to their ability they can produce more happiness locally than population (16% more). As a result only they can produce enough happiness locally to overcome their higher settling penalty and eventually be happiness-neutral. Late-game this means they can have super-tall cities with no happiness hit at all meaning they can literally ICS forever.

Celts: One of my favorites. Their unique abilities ensure their pick of any religious beliefs. This means they can get RB's at any difficulty which enable them to get extra happiness, culture, and faith early and zoom through the social trees as a result. Their opera house also gives an extra +3 happiness meaning their cities will be growing at least 3 taller midgame (more if supported by religion).

There are probably more but those are my 3 favorite. Any religious civ or civ that gives extra happiness to early buildings is good at this.
 
My main problem is not being able to manage a wide empire, I can do that just fine, my problem is getting the wide empire in the first place. Without war, it just doesn't seem possible to do so on standard map settings, there just isn't enough room. On a standard continent with 3-4 civs, and maybe 5-6 city states, there are only about 12-15 decent city locations anyway. Given that you're competing with your neigbhours, the most cities you will settle before all the (worthwhile) land is gone is about 4-5, even if you pump out nothing but settlers.

It's weird because one of the criticisms of BNW was that the map didn't fill in, like it did in G&K or Civ4. Certainly in the medieval era there is still empty "room", but the difference is that in Civ 5 a city is not worth founding unless there is a really awesome spot for it. Most of the land just isn't worth claiming anyway, there are very few spots available and you won't get many of them.
 
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