One unfun aspect of Civ that prevents me to found new cities at mid game

I usually play tall at the begining (sometimes, I only own 2 cities until midgame) and then wide (by conquering and puppeting like crazy, because at that time I'm ahead in science). I enjoy very much the age of exploration in Civ and, when I discover a good spot in an island or a distant continent far away my homeland, I always think about founding a new city as a reward for my map exploration. But then, I quickly discard that idea, because it can take centuries to develope the new city without hurting the developing of my core cities (by significantly delaying the building of NW).

I don't think going from 2 to 3 cities is going from tall to wide. In my opinion, NW restriction also penalizes tall empires with cities founded in low production areas or in an advanced era.

What really helps in BNW to alleviate this problem is to establish trade routes between your cities, when they are close enough. But it doesn't help for a distant city in another continent (unless you found 2 close cities in that continent, of course).

mikeville said:

What good is having cake if you can't eat it????

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nothing wrong but if you eat it, its gone, another one shouldn't magically reappear.

Having the cake and eating it too is a way of saying someone wants it both ways. They want to have a cake and they also want to eat it at the same time, not in sequence. Obviously you'll need to have a cake before you can eat one

the only one I don't like is the national intelligence agency because why would you ever build a police station in every city when the AI only seems to put spies in your biggest city?

actually, who cares if the AI is stealing your tech? At emperor and below you have such a lead it's almost irrelevant that the AI steals a few. Above that and the AI has such a lead that they probably won't be stealing from you.

Resipsa said:

I'm not sure that hard building and selling 3+ barracks is worth it to get the HE. To be clear why not produce T1 upgraded units from your other cities?

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That's the point. HE either needs to give some other bonus to its city (thus not disincentivising all your barracks) or else give a civ-wide bonus (perhaps all your units everywhere, new and existing, get the free promo).

sonicandfffan said:

the only one I don't like is the national intelligence agency...

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Concur... I don't know that I've ever built it.

As I read through the comments on this thread, they open up some perspectives on what has been bothering me. The bias toward tall versus wide is not limited to NW's and Oxford University.

Undoubtedly, I have a few hangovers from previous Civ releases that give me problems getting fully immersed in BNW.

I have always gone wide. I miss the tribal villages of previous versions that sometimes would yield settlers among the "goodies." I have a lot of experience telling me that not going wide means coming to a critical point and having no access to some strategic resource necessary to complete my game plan. (I don't back stab even when playing Civilization).

Taking into account that very same issue of strategic resources, I note that others now say "trade" for the missing resources. That takes me to a second part of my hangover: I never have met civs willing to trade strategic resources, in the past. Even trying to trade luxury resources fetched up such absurd demands from other civs - that I conclude the sole effect of trying to trade was to slow down the game. It's become my bias - trading resources with other civs was a waste of time and therefore boring - and I've never felt any significant loss for it.

Up to G&K, playing wide, I was able to organize building construction to acquire most NW's. Not so with BNW. The number of reasonable building cites in proximity to my capital appears to have become woefully scarce and fourth or fifth cities invariably lack the resources to undertake that type of building program.

That leads me to the affect of BNW maps and the part they may play in inhibiting the wide game. I am curious as to whether it's only me, or whether others have noticed a significant change in the character of the maps. (Apart from rivers that forever run parallel to the sea about two hexes inland defying the natural slope of the land; rivers that start two or three hexes from the ocean but flow away from the ocean; and the increased occurrences of major inland seas that seem like a kind of pointless "gotcha" by the developers to prove that you should have built a scout).

Frequently, in BNW my natural territory has only one short river. My previous practice has been to build my first three cities on rivers, having suffered through many cities not built on rivers that never grew. That river strategy is not easily followed in BNW. I often find that no sooner have I experienced the exultation of discovering a second and longer river near my capital than I stumble across some other civ's capital on that river - or I come to a river mouth where I might have built my key port but there's already a CS there.

Thus, after building two or three cities - there's no place left to build, other than to choose the rather futile strategy of AI Polynesia that spams nearly impossible-to-defend cities everywhere.

Also, in my last two games - I have watched in horror as neighboring civs have come and plunked new cities right in the middle of my territory. In previous civs, I'd build an army fast and get rid of the intruders at the first chance. If I did that in BNW I'd quickly go bankrupt and probably be beyond recovery. (In the last game - with three cities, monuments, two granaries under construction, two warriors, one worker and one luxury resource (silver) developed, I completed the Great Library and already was LOSING 1gpt (with no roads built).

I don't want to be accused of claiming it's become impossible to go wide. The second game I finished was a Domination victory but the percentage of games I start but find too boring to continue has shot up to around 80 percent.

So, I'm still trying to love BNW, while sometimes going for days without finding a map that looks like it's worth bothering about, (literally). Maybe the real issue for me and for other wide players is that BNW, in its zeal for going tall, has taken too much away from players who learned to love Civilization by going wide. My hope is that the fall patch will help to restore the balance for those of us who simply feel too confined when limited to two or three cities. There must be quite a few.

Wodan said:

I don't mind the disincentives to building National Wonders if you have more cities, but HE in particular bugs me.

Here is the optimal gameplay: build barracks in all cities, build HE in your desired unit/production city, when it pops immediately sell all your barracks in other cities. That's just demoralizing and makes you wonder, wtf? None of the other NWs perform such an effective removal of benefits from your other cities.

I suppose the devs would say that you can still make units in your other cities... you just have normal units plus a few elite ones.

But in practice that really makes it a very narrow \ strategy. It not only is limited to a Tall strategy, but Tall where you are spamming units to win a one-time war or else in a bid for Domination. All other kinds of Tall strategies should stick with the sell-back-barracks optimal gameplay.

So to me it's very limited, much more so than all the other NWs. There are plenty of other possible benefits. The one they picked (free promo in HE city only) is just wrong.

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Most of the National Wonders are like this though? You'd be saying the same thing about the National College if Libraries weren't so freaking good and a requirement for every city even if you never build the NC.

Alzadar said:

Especially annoying is the National Wonders with anti-synergy like the Heroic Epic. You have to build Barracks in every city, but once you get the Epic then you only want to build units in one city! Frustrating design.

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If you have the production in cities you could always do Barracks, Armories, and Military Academies. Take the Total War Autocracy tenet and you have several cities that are pump out Air Repair Bombers or +1 Range ships. Get Brandenburg Gate in one and it's 1 promo away from Air Repair and Logistics.

HE isn't even that strong, either. If I just broke into another continent in a cross-continental war, I'm going to be rush-buying reinforcements from whichever city I just conquered. Not train one from the other side of the map and wait another 12+ turns for it to get to the front lines, just so I can get a measly 15% increase in combat strength.

Although perhaps that is the intention. In theory, a wide empire should eventually overwhelm a smaller empire in pure numbers, so the 15% would help try and balance that out a bit. If you only have 4 cities it is never far from the front lines. Unless you are someone like Venice/Austria and purchase CS's far away, I suppose.

Perhaps if Barracks, Heroic Epic, Alhambra, etc. were limited to units Built in the city... and didn't apply to units Bought there. (Because buying allows you to get more units out of a single city)

That would encourage building units...and spreading out unit production over multiple cities... and therefore barracks actually being useful in multiple cities.

(Maybe some revised Honor policy would allow purchased units to benefit from exp buildings... And give the exp buildings an additional benefit)

I see many of you still think "vanilla" when it comes to unit building strategy. There are basically two approaches: the Soviet way and the German way.

Soviet way: Crank out cheap units to overwhelm the enemy with numbers (perhaps with barracks).
German way: Build fewer but more powerful (promoted) units.

With Autocracy (and possibly Big Ben), you can crank out an insane number of units from a single city.

The answer to the question of tall vs. wide is from turn 0, because going for a wide strategy is basically turning you into a "peaceful warmonger": you're likely to generate more hate for having adjacent lands and resources, which you compensate for by having more resources. From this stems your combat system as well. If you can produce an infantry or tank unit every 5 turns in 20 cities, the 15% combat bonus or extra promo from

However, bonuses do tend to add up. 15% here, 10% there... You can easily double the unit's real combat strength with proper placement.

With the Soviet way you want to stick to cheap and slow-moving units (infantry, anti-tanks, arty), while with the German way you want to use mobile forces (tanks, aircraft) because the more valuable units are better used for surgical strikes (followed by swift withdrawal). Brandenburg is basically irrelevant. Slow moving units can rarely truly use the terrain promotions (drill and shock) to their maximum effect.

But what about we are complaining? Most of national wonders are not even worth it, and the other requirments are not hars.
Who is goint to run a city without library anyway? Without Monument?
And you can wait with universitets, which sometimes makes sense, since postponing this free tech may be better.
Which leaves grand temple (not obligatory), EEC (not obligatory) and still easy to build this markets, NSA (dont build it often, so dont remeber name ;-) ), circus maximus (again can live without), heroic epic (hardly ever build it even with tall)

Or are we complaining that we can grab 8 city sites before T100 and still have evertyhing, and AI will not even consider attacking us?

You can always slow down for a while. Build this libraries, buy it in last one, stop to build this NC, and after that continue.

NW wonders are not obligatory, they are just ways to softcap ICS, and give civs second wind if they not grabbed all free land in first turns. Since without it wide is winning strategy. People do not go wide since they like it or roleplay reasons, but since they believe it is effective:
- You generate more culture, ideaology defense.
- More luxies and strategic without playing with CS.
- More production.
- Possibly more tourism (with landmarks).
- Longer borders, so more civs will trade with you, since you are near.
Of course there are some obstacles:
- Science limit, yet 4/6 of rationalism is wide friendly.
- Culture malus, but it is not so hard to overcome this penalty.
- Gold for all this building. But once you did it you are again better.

Smart wide is better in long run.

Arachnofiend said:

Most of the National Wonders are like this though? You'd be saying the same thing about the National College if Libraries weren't so freaking good and a requirement for every city even if you never build the NC.

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No, I wouldn't. Library, Monument, etc. are useful in every city. Barracks are only useful in cities you want to make units at the cost of foregoing infrastructure or, at minimum, generating science/currency. HE's benefit says units built there are better; units built at other cities are not as good. The same is not true of any other NW. Furthermore, it escalates when you have to decide where to build Stable, Armory, Alhambra, etc. All those things cost hammers.

Nicasen said:

I'd rather the setup stay as is because national wonders are meant to give tall players a boost and be inaccessible if you go wide.

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That sentiment is about three years out-of-date.

Tall play has the lion's share of boosts. It's wide play that generally seems like more trouble than it's worth. Far better to grow dense populations that can fill specialist slots than to decrement your happiness, gold, sopol accumulation, and so on.

Bed0 said:

I think that would be the case before BNW, now there is little reason to go wide.

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The economy aspect of BNW makes going wide even more of a necessity. Go settle on or near every luxury you can find that provides gold. Work the luxury tiles in every city. Make lots of cities close together for profitable city connections. Make many markets and put in merchant slots for gold. Make a military without going negative. Watch your neighbors get crushed by what looks like an old G&K rush.

BNW didn't make war completely inaccessible. It's just harder than build on a river.. derp make units derp. I feel BNW increased the skill requirement of the game due to the difficult money system.

Bed0 said:

I think that would be the case before BNW, now there is little reason to go wide.

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As if! Wide has MANY advantages. More resources, more gold from city connections, more digsites, more culture per turn, more tourism, more build queues, more hammers to send to World Congress competitions, more faith, more religious pressure, not to mention it denies land to the other civs and prevents them from acquiring those bonuses. I'm probably even forgetting something.

Notice how every snowball is someone who owns half the world. Everyone who wins a WC competition is the widest mofo on the planet. Because of that, you don't even get fewer social policies as a wide empire anymore, because you'll win the World Fair with all your hammers, and get both a free social policy AND 20 turns of double culture, which you had more of to begin with.

steveg700 said:

That sentiment is about three years out-of-date.

Tall play has the lion's share of boosts. It's wide play that generally seems like more trouble than it's worth. Far better to grow dense populations that can fill specialist slots than to decrement your happiness, gold, sopol accumulation, and so on.

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Ideologies pretty much eliminate local city unhappiness for a wide player altogether. Commerce+Rationalism makes Trading Posts better than Lux tiles for gold generation, and gives you even MORE happiness. Free social policies rain from the sky late game, and in fact, a wide player's Writer bomb is stronger than a Tall one's, simply because he has more culture per turn. Wide players can take advantage of more landmarks than a tall player, which means even more culture per turn. The SoPol penalty was already reduced in BNW by a significant amount, and Liberty reduces the SoPol penalty to a very small amount. In fact, full Liberty gives you 1 global happiness per city connection, effectively reducing the base unhappiness per city to 2, and reduces unhappiness from population by 10% -- similar to how Tradition gets +1 happiness per 10 citizens in a city, except you don't need a flat increment of 10 in any one city to get it. You can even still get tall cities with specialist spam because of internal trade routes, which a wide player can afford to spam because of all the gold he's making from city connections and trading posts. Where are those Tall advantages you were talking about?

Honestly, Tall isn't better, it's just easier. Wide is superior in many ways, there's just more dirty work involved, but once you get your train moving, you're unstoppable.