Gold vs Commerce on buildings

So what would you chnage to allow smaller empires to keep up more?

We already have Tech diffusion for that.

Maybe Noriad2 doesn't like to use it though? Don't know. <shrug>

JosEPh
 
Tech diffusion only keeps you away from not falling back too much - it won't help you at all to outtech the AI. What noriad said is also what I miss most from the vanilla game: There were multiple strategies; if you got into higher difficulties you had to have specialized cities; every new city was a decision... While in C2C, you really can just found more and more cities, they can't really be specialized, the gold-science-slider is more or less useless...

I proposed some time ago a couple of buildings, that have a HUGE effect on your whole empire, yet cost a LOT of gold. The key here was that their maintenance was based on your total population. So for example a National Wonder "Free Education Service" would give all your universities, Schools and overall science (or now education) a HUGE boost, but for every population point you have (globally) it would cost 1000 gold. If you have a mega empire with 100 cities, there is no way to afford it, but if you keep your empire small it can give you a very sweet boost.

Other ideas to adress this would the re-introduction of key buildings. Buildings with a high percentage science boost for example, that costs so much in terms of gold (or even hammers) that you can't build it everywhere. Or like a reward system in SimCity that you can build the strongest research buildings only in cities with a science output higher then X.

We could convert a fraction of :gold: buildings back to :commerce: so the slider gets usefull again. IMO, it should not be granted that you can always run at 0% taxes. That's like balancing a role play game that you ALWAYS outheal yourself and therefore can't die.

Another point to adress would be tile outcome. I figured that after a while it doesn't matter where you place your cities in c2c. Even a city in the middle of Dunes can grow very strong by Desert Camp improvements (imho they are too OP for the early game), Trade Routes and of course all those +1:food: or :Hammers: buildings that are around. The best strategy from the renaissance onwards (haven't reached this in deity nightmare, but it works in deity and therefore most likely in every lower difficulty as well) is to SPAM your cities. Build as many as you can, only 2 tiles away from each other in all the locations you can. Even desert, 1 tile islands or permafrost. Trade routes and small buildings will help them grow and very very fast they have a net income with a sweet boost to :culture: :espionage: :science: etc for the whole empire. And then there is still MUCH room for improvements in the city.
Somehow, improvements need to make tiles much stronger again. Also, tile outcome itself could be scaled with tech level.
Sadly, the way it is now makes kinda sense since nowadays city placement really is that much an issue, it's mostly cities that are on strategic trade routes that grow best (correct me if I'm wrong). But ingame it comes to early I think.
 
Guess I'll just have to agree to Disagree with most of Noriad2 and your posts. ;)

Specialized cities should only be a temporary thing that shifts with your empires needs. So I don't agree that you Must have specialized cities.

We've already in the past made the :science: buildings cost a ridiculous amount of :gold: per turn and that didn't pan out so well. Those buildings everyone said was "necessary to build" started to Not being built At All. Ask Hydro I bet he still remembers that experiment quite well.

And I use my sliders, All of them as they come on line, thru out my games. I don't have research set at 100% but only a few times for rushing important techs. I always dedicate % to Culture and to Esp. So my sliders are quite useful.

As for "Spam cities" that's really called Expansionist/Opportunistic placement. Some players think it's only good to have a handful of cities on a huge map per player. Not everyone else thinks that way or wants to be Limited that way. And BTS is a 4X strategy turn based game last time I looked.

I had to learn a long time ago to leave the vanilla BtS "Power" strategies behind. And to develop strategies that worked with C2C's systems. Too many Deity vanilla BtS players over the years have come in and wanted to reshape C2C to work like Vanilla BTS. Much of what you've posted has been tried several times in the past 5+ years of this Mod's life, which has never worked out too well either as I recall. And that is and has been a disservice to the Mod, impo.

So this is why I have to disagree and this is my opinion over the subject.
JosEPh
 
I've started a settler level, normal speed game to get it quickly built up to where I can test a pervasive problem here. I started it in the Modern Era. This would be the first time in a long time that I've seen much of what takes place around this timeline in the game. I'm actually quite surprised by some of the strategic depth making it VERY difficult to build up cities easily. One very workable strategy I've been able to take note of (useful only for the patient player which I'm not right now since I'm just trying to get this to a point I can debug a problem) stems from the nearly overwhelming levels of unhealth that can confound the ease of city development. There are a lot of gold producing buildings that cost a bit of unhealth each. And a lot of production buildings that also bring with it a lot of unhealth. It makes it nearly crippling to try to get one city to manage both and the production at a more reasonable pace is completely sufficient to building up an economically power city while not trying to make it a military production powerhouse while if the highly productive city does its best to avoid much of the gold glut buildings you can maximize its production potential by giving yourself more room for population which can be made to add to further production enmasse. So really... from what I'm seeing, the ability for cities to specialize in C2C seems to actually morph by era, which is entirely abnormal to vanilla and I think it's quite a step in the right direction to making a mod that IS strategically deeper than the base game.

I'm still in strong agreement that a bit more strength given to the slider would be a huge positive. When I do start struggling with gold, which on occasion I did, I was appalled by how little the shifts on the slider would represent given the huge numbers I was working with. The difference between economic health and a massive problem is now a hairs width compared to the padding the slider once offered. I'm NOT sure this is really a wonderful thing. And I cannot express how frustrating it is when you have thousands of excess gold and have no need for gold and can't adjust the slider at all to allocate further funds to research. So on both ends of the issue it's a frustration that so few things manipulate our commerce levels while so many manipulate gold alone.


I do have to counter one of Mouse's points though... he said that plots could use more power... I must say this observation would have to come from an older play experience and may stem from an earlier era. By modern, plots have a HUGE impact and the quality of the plot can differ greatly. Much strength has been given back to larger plot capturing cities.
 
I do have to counter one of Mouse's points though... he said that plots could use more power... I must say this observation would have to come from an older play experience and may stem from an earlier era. By modern, plots have a HUGE impact and the quality of the plot can differ greatly. Much strength has been given back to larger plot capturing cities.

I admit that I haven't been so far down the tech tree for a loooong time. Just curious: What percentage of your total :food: and :hammers: are actually produced by plots, and how much is produced by buildings, trade routes and specialists? (I mean the base value, buildings that give % doesn't count as produced by buildings since it also affects yields from plots.)
 
I'm not sure. I mean there's a LOT of production from buildings and there probably should be by then. BUT an average plot production FAR outweighs the value one gets from a specialist at least.

It's commonly 10-15 total yields per improved plot at that stage. Sometimes more. Some are less like the ocean but with some of the buildings you get around that time, added production and food on ocean tiles are easily obtained as well.
 
I'm not sure. I mean there's a LOT of production from buildings and there probably should be by then. BUT an average plot production FAR outweighs the value one gets from a specialist at least.

But I can imagine you gonna have plenty specialists by then. As long as plot yields are not completly minor, I'm ok with that. In fact, I think it's brilliant that both strategies work: A very dense empire with lots of cities but few plots per city, and an empire with lots of plots for every city. So I'm happy that plot yields are not as bad as I thought.
 
So what would you chnage to allow smaller empires to keep up more?

That is a difficult question. I'll try to think about it for a while.

But what I'm noticing more is that I have basically the same build queue for every city. In BTS you had research cities, financial cities, industrial cities (wonders or military), and a Great Person Farm, each with a different build queue.
The only real decision in C2C is whether I make buildings that gives XP bonuses to combat units or not. Dedicated Great Person Farms are not that useful given the large number of specialists (free or not) everywhere.
 
@Noriad2

Do you consider what wonders you build in a city? Such as putting a bunch of Great Scientist generating wonders in one city?

In my current game I missed most wonders as the AI is far ahead in tech. I did manage to found some religions mid-game as the AIs in my game apparently considered them low-priority, and tried to build a dedicated GP farm using religion wonders and National Epic. However, the majority of my GPs still come from other cities.

@Noriad2
Also in this case do you play with or without wonder limits?

No limits on wonders.
 
So what would you chnage to allow smaller empires to keep up more?

Perhaps this:

In the Europa Universalis series if strategy games, large multicultural multi-religious empires are inherently more unstable than small monocultural mono-religious empires. Therefore a small monocultural monoreligious empire can allow more free thought.
In a large multicultural multi-religious empire it is wiser to preventively execute or imprison a few free-thinkers before they start rousing the rabble and make the empire crash in civil wars.

An overhaul of the religion system seems to be planned by Dancing Hoskuld.
Many religions go through different stages over history. Sometimes they are dogmatic and oppressive, sometimes they are moral, sometimes they are militant, sometimes they are pacifist. Sometimes they are corrupt money-suckers. If a player gets more control over the nature of his religion(s), perhaps in a new religion system he can choose what factor his temples increase: stability, happiness, science, militancy etc. Players with a large unstable empire would most likely choose to use his religion to increase stability while players with a small stable empire would chose to use his religion to increase science. In other words:rulers can order their priests to preach tolerance, militancy, pacifism etc but only one thing at a time.

Right now, stability is easy to keep low, even on deity/nightmare. The only time stability becomes a problem is when you conquer a large city, don't have enough education and crimefighting, and neglect to increase those as soon as possible.

Also, I'd like to have multiple religions in the same city be another risk factor for stability. A ruler can mitigate that by having religions (at least those he controls) preach religious tolerance. But again, the rules should be so that priests of one religion should only be able to preach one thing at a time.
 
Perhaps this:

In the Europa Universalis series if strategy games, large multicultural multi-religious empires are inherently more unstable than small monocultural mono-religious empires. Therefore a small monocultural monoreligious empire can allow more free thought.
In a large multicultural multi-religious empire it is wiser to preventively execute or imprison a few free-thinkers before they start rousing the rabble and make the empire crash in civil wars.

An overhaul of the religion system seems to be planned by Dancing Hoskuld.
Many religions go through different stages over history. Sometimes they are dogmatic and oppressive, sometimes they are moral, sometimes they are militant, sometimes they are pacifist. Sometimes they are corrupt money-suckers. If a player gets more control over the nature of his religion(s), perhaps in a new religion system he can choose what factor his temples increase: stability, happiness, science, militancy etc. Players with a large unstable empire would most likely choose to use his religion to increase stability while players with a small stable empire would chose to use his religion to increase science. In other words:rulers can order their priests to preach tolerance, militancy, pacifism etc but only one thing at a time.

Right now, stability is easy to keep low, even on deity/nightmare. The only time stability becomes a problem is when you conquer a large city, don't have enough education and crimefighting, and neglect to increase those as soon as possible.

Also, I'd like to have multiple religions in the same city be another risk factor for stability. A ruler can mitigate that by having religions (at least those he controls) preach religious tolerance. But again, the rules should be so that priests of one religion should only be able to preach one thing at a time.

This is all predicated on the use of REV Option correct? If it is, What if you don't use REV?

And if it is based on using REV, then it should be so stated to keep the concepts in context.

Base Mod vs Using REV Option has a world of difference between them with a world of different strategies and outcomes.

The changes proposed need to be kept in context of Options Used or Not Used. Not generalized statements taken as covering the whole. The religion proposals fit this sphere. The Base Mod religions work very well together. There is a good race to acquire religions and to spread religions. If you miss out on getting/founding a religion you better adopt a neighbors sooner rather than later as you will fall behind in the early/early mid research/tech race.

Now in the context of using REV Option the proposals to Religion sound intriguing, but only in that context of using REV.

JosEPh
 
This is all predicated on the use of REV Option correct? If it is, What if you don't use REV?

And if it is based on using REV, then it should be so stated to keep the concepts in context.

Base Mod vs Using REV Option has a world of difference between them with a world of different strategies and outcomes.

As Revolutions are on by default (but there is an option to turn it off), I simply assumed that Revolutions are part of the base mod.
 
I think it's how resources work that contributes the major chunk to what cripples the going tall strage vs going wide strategy. In civ in general but this mod in particular. An expansion strategy is always better since then you will have more resource bonuses to combat the inherent happiness and health penalties from every citizen and alot of the buildings. Since it also is so easy and cheap to place down a city in the middle of that worthless desert to grab some incense or on the tundra to grab some minor bonus it is not balanced against potentially crippling expansion costs like in vanilla.

This is most glaringly obvious if you have the RevMod on or create vassals. These vassals struggle to survive against the sudden -30 drop in health and happiness that 'liberating' them caused. Usually I have to help them along by providing a bunch of health and happiness bonuses and even money or they will never grow.
 
@Noriad2

Do you consider what wonders you build in a city? Such as putting a bunch of Great Scientist generating wonders in one city?

Also in this case do you play with or without wonder limits?

Even in my test game where I got almost all the wonders with unlimited wonders on, the wonders except for the military ones had no effect in helping to specialise a city. For example I built all the wonders for Great Doctors in one city and it still only produces Great Prophets or with the latest changes to education Great Merchants.

This is most glaringly obvious if you have the RevMod on or create vassals. These vassals struggle to survive against the sudden -30 drop in health and happiness that 'liberating' them caused. Usually I have to help them along by providing a bunch of health and happiness bonuses and even money or they will never grow.

Liberating colonies in C2C is the same as killing all the cities in the colony if you play with Rev on. The immediately go into anarchy so that they can move from the base civics, by the time the anarchy is over the cities have all revolted or been taken over by barbarians. Giving them a 2 turn golden age would fix that but they will still have lost access to all the myth buildings and the other building they may have gotten through pseudo and normal wonders in their old empire.
 
As Revolutions are on by default (but there is an option to turn it off), I simply assumed that Revolutions are part of the base mod.

@ Modders,
Since When did REV get turned On by default? That's news to me.

@Noriad2
Usually once you turn REV ON then it gets set in your User Settings file. So that the next game you start will have REV already On. But REV is not On by default. Delete or remove the user settings file and you will see more closely what is the base Mod. This is why StrategyOnly last year had the User Setting file that comes with the download of the Mod stripped bare. You the player will choose what is On or Off by how you set up your 1st game.

Now I do know that Thunderbrd has set certain of his Options to ON by default, such as his More Rivers, More Resources Options. Also the Minimum City Tiles Option is set to ON because many players didn't want the base 9 tiles of their city to flip to an AI from Cultural Influence. But that is a recent addition and if you want more vanilla type Cultural influence that should be turn Off (unchecked).

The Mod does still make many Options (that could be base mod ) selectable. Usable mountains is one such Option that has been discussed about being On by default and hidden. There are several others too.

JosEPh
 
I have no idea who thought Rev On was a good default. I'm not in agreement since I know the underbelly of the system still has some significant bugs and it's not easily supported by our current team. I've also found that its main effect is to hobble your enemies just as soon as you start to be concerned by their accumulated strength. The idea is neat and I think it just needs some further smoothing and developing to be really good.

I'm also not sure why we'd want minimum city tiles on as a default... Don't most players prefer to be able to capture by culture?
 
Liberating colonies in C2C is the same as killing all the cities in the colony if you play with Rev on. The immediately go into anarchy so that they can move from the base civics, by the time the anarchy is over the cities have all revolted or been taken over by barbarians. Giving them a 2 turn golden age would fix that but they will still have lost access to all the myth buildings and the other building they may have gotten through pseudo and normal wonders in their old empire.

I've never dared to liberate colonies immediately after smacking down 2 cities like you normally would in vanilla. But even after some basic buildup before release and then immediately handing over any resources and gold you can spare it can get pretty interesting to say the least.
 
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