I'm feeling over-bonused

And yes, "over-bonused" is a word. Please don't argue with me on this. I know I'm right.
Now to the point...

Even before G&K, I've been feeling like the strategy in Civ V has way too much to do with acquiring the most/best bonuses. On a given turn you might produce a GP, upgrade two units, ally w/ a CS, select a new policy, build a wonder, hook up two lux resources, etc.

If the game is going to have so many multipliers and bonuses, why can't there be some that are negative? There are only a couple that I can think of at the moment, ex: India w/ 2x unhappiness from # of cities. Wouldn't choosing the lesser of evils be as interesting in Civ as it is choosing the best of bonuses?

I think it would be great if they went back to government to accomplish this, except that all forms of government could give negative multipliers. So democracy could give 10% unhappiness while at war, socialism could give 10% less production empire wide, republic could give 10% less gold, dictatorship 10% less food, etc. They could even add in a local political system at the city level with additional negative multipliers.

Anyone else on board with this or at least the feeling of being "over-bonused"?


My apologies if this has been discussed in a previous thread or is deemed better placed in the rant thread, but I'm not really unhappy with the game. Just sharing an opinion.

Generally speaking, yes, I do think we need a simple government system that gives one bonus and one negative, it's an issue I've had with Civ since IV. Opportunity costs are hardly enough IMO. But what you propose would be terribly balanced, even if I like the idea.

It would be hard to make the governments not feel just like SPs though. I really don't think it would work with the current framework of V, but generally speaking I really want to see some kind of a bonus-trade-off feature.

It would be hard to make the governments not feel just like SPs though

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Very true. There would be some redundancy there.

I'm not sold on the government idea but making some of the social policies have a "bonus-trade-off" as you call it, would be more reasonable. In reality, policies that the government contrives don't benefit everyone at the same time. It should be the same way in the game.

There are built in trade offs with SPs. Taking some policy trees prevents you from taking others. The cost of each successive SP goes up automatically as does the cost penalty for the number of cities you have.

The last time they used government types to impose negative bonuses was, IIRC, in Civ3. They also added diplo hits if you adopted a different government type than an AI. If negative bonuses through government were imposed in Civ5 it would take less than three days for crafty players to begin posting "If you play as Civ A and adopt government type X you'll romp to victory." Moreover, the diplo system in Civ5 just became a bit better. Adding anew twist would likely set it back and very likely disadvantage the AI substantially.

Cool idea. Maybe instead of SP trees, governments would be a selection from a pool, somewhat like beliefs. Except you have to choose a new one for every, say, 20 citizens born (or acquired) in your civ, and some are mutually exclusive. You could stack the same gov't multiple times, but with exponential penalties each time.

Alternatively, instead of every 10 citizens, it could be the first time your unhappiness reaches 20, 40, 60, etc, not counting happiness against it. That would be a little nicer to tall empires.

There was a story, about Civ 3 IIRC, where Firaxis took out "Dark Ages" after they were reviled in testing. That might explain why they don't like to push penalties on players.

Why should we get negatives then we allready have payed alot to get these bonuses and thats the negative aboute these bonuses, they cost.

I guess I understand the points being made about having earned the bonuses. However, I still think that if there are going to be as many positive modifiers as there are, there should also be negative modifiers. It's a little silly accumulating 300 different bonuses throughout the course of the game.

Not that I expect Civ to perfectly reflect the world, but in reality, there are pros and cons to every decision. Besides, I think it would be fun and require good strategy to select lesser evils.

The last time they used government types to impose negative bonuses was, IIRC, in Civ3. They also added diplo hits if you adopted a different government type than an AI. If negative bonuses through government were imposed in Civ5 it would take less than three days for crafty players to begin posting "If you play as Civ A and adopt government type X you'll romp to victory."

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Yeah, my experience with Civ is II, then III, and now V. So, I've seen it go from no multipliers, to positive as well as negative multipliers, and now to a gazilliion positive modifiers. I absolutely think Civ V is the best yet, but in my opnion, the previous games (at least II and III) had it right with regard to "customizing your civ." It should be either no customizing or balanced customizing.

Players dont like to have to choose between bad things.its not fun and feels bad.

Esperr said:

Players dont like to have to choose between bad things.its not fun and feels bad.

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You miss the point. This isn't about choosing bad things, it's about choosing two good things that also have a negative. It's not fun and it feels bad? I wonder why it worked so well in Civ 2 then.

Andulias said:

You miss the point. This isn't about choosing bad things, it's about choosing two good things that also have a negative. It's not fun and it feels bad? I wonder why it worked so well in Civ 2 then.

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That was a long time ago. Ideas about gaming have changed since then. People dont like to make choices that might hurt them in games anyway(even if theres a good choice attached with it). It doesnt "feel" good to players, which in turn isnt fun. Its why things like "corruption" from civ III probably didnt carry over, because thats never fun.

If this are going well enough that you can grab every bonus then yeah that is too many bonuses, but that rarely happens. When making civ4 they said the removed (most of) the penalties with civics that existed with governments in previous games because choosing a disadvantage is less fun that picking a bonus.

Also not being able to pick a different bonus is a penalty. Not even talking about the exclusive policies, you can't get all of them in one game. Regarding wonders, it would be very difficult to build all of them. It feels like a penalty to build half of a wonder and expect to have it's bonus and then lose it. Then other players having a bonus I don't have feels like a penalty to me. Having won a game with a diplomatic victory playing Sweden and using patronage and getting every CS on my side and then later playing against Greece and having them get 100% of the city states against me sure felt like a penalty.

I think maybe you're just too much of an optimist, only seeing all the good things you have. Be more pessimistic and think about everything you don't have and I'm sure you'll see the bad in everything.

Esperr said:

That was a long time ago. Ideas about gaming have changed since then. People dont like to make choices that might hurt them in games anyway(even if theres a good choice attached with it). It doesnt "feel" good to players, which in turn isnt fun. Its why things like "corruption" from civ III probably didnt carry over, because thats never fun.

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How's about you first play the game and then dismiss features, m'kay? Everyone hated corruption in III. Everybody loved governments in 2. You simply have no idea what we are talking about, so don't jump to conclusions like that. And saying that old games have faulty mechanics by default is wrong on so many levels that I just don't know where to start.

As Binthuy points out, the design approach of Civ V is to promote trade-offs between different positive decisions rather than to actively penalise, which is solid game design. In chess you don't suffer a penalty from moving a queen instead of a pawn, but you do deny yourself control of squares, and possibly the option of taking pieces, that the alternative move would allow that your actual move does not.

I do however miss one negative - the Civ IV removal of 'bad' tribal villages that could spawn barbarians around your unwitting scout, a feature that never returned in Civ V.

PhilBowles said:

...I do however miss one negative - the Civ IV removal of 'bad' tribal villages that could spawn barbarians around your unwitting scout, a feature that never returned in Civ V.

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I forgot about that one. Yes, I'd like to have that back as well if only for the very occasional pleasure it gave when a competitor would ninja a hut only to have it sprout Barbs.

binhthuy71 said:

I forgot about that one. Yes, I'd like to have that back as well if only for the very occasional pleasure it gave when a competitor would ninja a hut only to have it sprout Barbs.

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I had forgotten there weren't negative goodie huts. I'd been not getting the with my initial warrior because I thought scouts would be better, but realized it said nothing about it in the scouts description.

binhthuy71 said:

I forgot about that one. Yes, I'd like to have that back as well if only for the very occasional pleasure it gave when a competitor would ninja a hut only to have it sprout Barbs.

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NO! I hated that! Losing my warrior to random chance, the only unit I can scout with the first 20 turns or so? No, no, no, I hated that!

It's one thing to let the player choose between two options, each with its positives and negatives. It's a whole other thing to slap the player in the face every now and then because the computer felt like it. One of the best things that CiV did was eliminate to a large extent random dice rolls, including in combat, I really don't want them back and I really don't want to be afraid to pop a goody hut. Penalize the player for the choices he makes, not something as random as a goody hut.

Andulias said:

NO! I hated that! Losing my warrior to random chance, the only unit I can scout with the first 20 turns or so? No, no, no, I hated that!

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In general I'm against randomness, but the fun of the early stages of Civ games comes in exploration, which should entail some risk. I got frustrated by the barb huts of course, but it added tension to encountering them which made it feel like exploration. Civ V has brought some of that sense back with static barbarian encampments, but randomly-spawning barbs and wild animals in IV really didn't cut it - that wasn't a peril of exploration, it happened anywhere you didn't have cultural borders. There was no sense that you were encountering a genuinely new part of the world with unforeseen terrors lying in wait. It's one of the things that really killed character in Civ IV for me.

And if you're going to have a random element like tribal villages at all, I think there should be negative as well as positive random consequences - yes, if you're actively choosing between options you don't want some which are wholly negative, but where you have randomness at all it should be exactly that.

Negative attributes are a handy balancing tool, and placing them carefully can make things interesting. Slapping them on every possible choice "just because" is pointless at best, and irritating at worst.

I liked how Alpha Centauri did things. The factions all had some weaknesses along with their strengths, each social engineering setting had positives and negatives. The positives outweighed the negatives but there was always quite a big downside to anything you picked. It seemed relatively well balanced and never felt like you were being unfairly penalised.

Alpha Centauri also had the best UN type implementation, it's a shame more of that didn't make it into later Civ games. Even the expanded UN in Beyond the Sword felt pretty half arsed in comparison.

Maybe you should be able to create a own civ which you pick bonuses and penalaties for. That system could use a point system which positives cost amount of points depending on how good they are while negatives give you points depeding on how bad they are.

This idea probably have been sugested many times but I just wanted to ad it here.