Ikael
King
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2005
- Messages
- 873
Since our beloved saga was born, one thing became each more apparent with each new civilization title:
There needs to be some kind of expansion constrainning mechanism put in place. There's a need to delay expansion (without making it detrimental altogether) and try to curb snowballing civilizations in the process (without punishing success).
In order to archieve that, each iteration of civilization have offered different solutions to this problem: The first 3 games tried to fine-tune the corruption system with little avail, whereas the 4th installment opted for a manteinance system that made you consider new cities as long-term investments, while civilization 5 used a combination of happiness and scalable technology and social policy costs, whose effectiveness, one must say, was also debatable.
So the question is, my fellow civfanatics: Which kind of system (or systems, or interaction between systems) would you propose in order to solve this problem?
I have come to think of two possible solutions.
- Identity radious + governance
- Civ 4's manteinance cost + cultural city level
Let me please expand upon them:
>>> Identity radious + governance
- Identity radious: The further from your capital, the less culture and science your cities will produce (there will be exceptions to this rule, based on special buildings / city placement). Keep in mind that culture not only will allow you to buy social policies like on civ 5, but it could also flip cities too..
- Governance level: The more cities you build, the higher their manteinance costs when passing a certain threshold (governance level) defined by your form of goverment. It will be a more transparent form of manteinance mechanism (the "manteinance curve" will be always visible), and distance from capital won't be affecting your manteinance costs (just your number of cities)
These two different mechanism will have a series of implications:
- Governance ensures that you will avoid Infinite City Spamming, and much like Civ 4's manteinance mechanism, it will force you to consider your cities as a long term
type of investment: They will be profitable for sure, but you will have to invest heavily in them for such a thing to happen, and if you expand your empire fast you
will certainly need time in order to "digest" it, or else you will overstrech yourself and fall behind like many empires did
- Cultural identity radious: It is an "anti-snowballing" type of mechanism. Keep in mind that there will still be a substantial difference of culture and science output between small and middle sized empires (cultural radious only start to kick in full force when placing cities in another continents or very far away from your capital), but the difference between middle sized and big empires will be almost neligible. It will also create a cool "metropolis VS colony" type of dynamic where metropolis provides cultural and scientific advances, while your colonies helps with military and economical affairs yet remain easily quite vulnerable to outside agitation and turmoil (cultural assimilation by nearby superpowers)
Why the hell would I ever want to build cities with these two deterrents in place?
- First of all, because new cities doesn't make social policies nor technologies harder to get, which means that your first wave of expansion (building up your hinterland around your capital) will be quite necessary and logical step if you wish to compete with other civs in the culture and scientific race. The lower level of governance of the early forms of goverment will be your biggest obstacle during the early game, but nearly every city that you build during this phase will be worth its initial investment cost, since nearby cities will keep providing a hefty amount of science and culture despite of the cultural identity radious mechanic in place
- Second, because as technology and social policies advances, a second wave of expansion far beyond your cultural radious will become each time more and more
attractive (colonial empires). Rembember that governance costs depends on your number of cities, no on distance per se, so if you have been landlocked by your
neighbours you can always colonice far away places to make up for that lack of vital space. There will also be several caveats and exceptions to the identity radious
limitations.
Observatories will make your far flung cities ignore their science penalties altogether, while culture generated by natural wonders won't be subjected to distance penalties either. And of course, access to certain special resources such as coal or petrol will be profitable enough to tempt you to fund a city just to get them, as their effects will be far more powerful than a mere strategic or luxury resource of yore.
In short, you will be able to keep expanding during the late game, but you should do it more wisely than on the early game, and become even more picky when choosing
the best spots for your cities if you want your empire to flourish in these far away lands (build cities near mountains for getting observatories, near natural wonders
for getting their culture, and pick the best places for your trade routes and resource control).
These two mechanics in place will make expanding your empire a far more thoughtful, engrossing and involving experience!
And now, for the other option:
>>> Civ 4's manteinance cost + cultural city level
Another different approach to this problem would be a return to Civilization 4's manteinance mechanic, but coupled with a new cultural mechanic (cultural city level)
created in order to both specialize cities and avoid a snowballing cultural effect by accumulating social policies.
Manteinance costs would work as they used to (cities costing gold the more you build and the more further away you build them). Thus, ICS is avoided, and you've gotta
invest into your cities in order to make them profitable.
Alright, but we all agreed that we liked social policies, right? Why can't we just leave them just like that? Civ 4 sytems + Civ 5 policies! Everyone wins!
Social Policies are great, but if you just gotta take into account its relationship with other game's systems. The combination of Civilization 4's manteinance system with Civ 5's social policies would give a huge advantage to big empires, making expansion the only strategy viable (you would need it for military, scientific AND cutlural victory) and thus, it needs to be tweaked. Hence why I propose this alternative system in order to replace social policies, based in the contribution of other fellow civver (whose name I can't remember for the life of me >.<):
Cultural city level
- Each city will have a certain cultural level, and social policies (now, "city traits") will be local, rather than empire-wide
- City culture will level up to 10 times maximum (reaching number 10 will mean that your city has gained a "legendary" status and it would a prequisite for archieving cultural victory)
- Every time that the city levels up, it will acquire one city trait in similar fashion to social policies, only this time, their effects will be local
- The social policy tree will have a net structure a la Beyond Earth, rather than a tree-like, branch structure. This way, you will be able to specialize a new city outright on its first leveling, rather than having to dwelve deeper into the social tree in order to "get to the good parts". Good city positioning and a couple of cultural traits will be enough for defining your new city's new role, even if older, more developed cities will have more bonuses and specialization options
- While individual cultural options will unlock as you research new technogies and build new world wonders (say, you will need to have reserached electricity if you want to pick the the "cinema festival" city trait) there won't be entire "SP trees" waiting to be unlocked trought science, in order to mitigate the "science is everything" problem
- Keep in mind, however, that there will be far more city traits avaible rather than the maximum 10 slots per city. That means that you won't be able to have every single city trait active in every city and thus, you will have to weight your choices carefully, for picking one city trait will mean to leave others
- This new cultural system will make the whole "cities as long term investments" ring more true than ever, rewarding both large and small empires, allowing a flexible degree of specialization in all your empire regardless of its size, yet allowing for small civilizations to be competitive in the cultural race too since SP will be local rather than empire-wide.
So what do you guys think of each sytem? Which ideas of your own do you have for developing expansion limit mechanisms? Go and share them!
There needs to be some kind of expansion constrainning mechanism put in place. There's a need to delay expansion (without making it detrimental altogether) and try to curb snowballing civilizations in the process (without punishing success).
In order to archieve that, each iteration of civilization have offered different solutions to this problem: The first 3 games tried to fine-tune the corruption system with little avail, whereas the 4th installment opted for a manteinance system that made you consider new cities as long-term investments, while civilization 5 used a combination of happiness and scalable technology and social policy costs, whose effectiveness, one must say, was also debatable.
So the question is, my fellow civfanatics: Which kind of system (or systems, or interaction between systems) would you propose in order to solve this problem?
I have come to think of two possible solutions.
- Identity radious + governance
- Civ 4's manteinance cost + cultural city level
Let me please expand upon them:
>>> Identity radious + governance
- Identity radious: The further from your capital, the less culture and science your cities will produce (there will be exceptions to this rule, based on special buildings / city placement). Keep in mind that culture not only will allow you to buy social policies like on civ 5, but it could also flip cities too..
- Governance level: The more cities you build, the higher their manteinance costs when passing a certain threshold (governance level) defined by your form of goverment. It will be a more transparent form of manteinance mechanism (the "manteinance curve" will be always visible), and distance from capital won't be affecting your manteinance costs (just your number of cities)
These two different mechanism will have a series of implications:
- Governance ensures that you will avoid Infinite City Spamming, and much like Civ 4's manteinance mechanism, it will force you to consider your cities as a long term
type of investment: They will be profitable for sure, but you will have to invest heavily in them for such a thing to happen, and if you expand your empire fast you
will certainly need time in order to "digest" it, or else you will overstrech yourself and fall behind like many empires did
- Cultural identity radious: It is an "anti-snowballing" type of mechanism. Keep in mind that there will still be a substantial difference of culture and science output between small and middle sized empires (cultural radious only start to kick in full force when placing cities in another continents or very far away from your capital), but the difference between middle sized and big empires will be almost neligible. It will also create a cool "metropolis VS colony" type of dynamic where metropolis provides cultural and scientific advances, while your colonies helps with military and economical affairs yet remain easily quite vulnerable to outside agitation and turmoil (cultural assimilation by nearby superpowers)
Why the hell would I ever want to build cities with these two deterrents in place?
- First of all, because new cities doesn't make social policies nor technologies harder to get, which means that your first wave of expansion (building up your hinterland around your capital) will be quite necessary and logical step if you wish to compete with other civs in the culture and scientific race. The lower level of governance of the early forms of goverment will be your biggest obstacle during the early game, but nearly every city that you build during this phase will be worth its initial investment cost, since nearby cities will keep providing a hefty amount of science and culture despite of the cultural identity radious mechanic in place
- Second, because as technology and social policies advances, a second wave of expansion far beyond your cultural radious will become each time more and more
attractive (colonial empires). Rembember that governance costs depends on your number of cities, no on distance per se, so if you have been landlocked by your
neighbours you can always colonice far away places to make up for that lack of vital space. There will also be several caveats and exceptions to the identity radious
limitations.
Observatories will make your far flung cities ignore their science penalties altogether, while culture generated by natural wonders won't be subjected to distance penalties either. And of course, access to certain special resources such as coal or petrol will be profitable enough to tempt you to fund a city just to get them, as their effects will be far more powerful than a mere strategic or luxury resource of yore.
In short, you will be able to keep expanding during the late game, but you should do it more wisely than on the early game, and become even more picky when choosing
the best spots for your cities if you want your empire to flourish in these far away lands (build cities near mountains for getting observatories, near natural wonders
for getting their culture, and pick the best places for your trade routes and resource control).
These two mechanics in place will make expanding your empire a far more thoughtful, engrossing and involving experience!
And now, for the other option:
>>> Civ 4's manteinance cost + cultural city level
Another different approach to this problem would be a return to Civilization 4's manteinance mechanic, but coupled with a new cultural mechanic (cultural city level)
created in order to both specialize cities and avoid a snowballing cultural effect by accumulating social policies.
Manteinance costs would work as they used to (cities costing gold the more you build and the more further away you build them). Thus, ICS is avoided, and you've gotta
invest into your cities in order to make them profitable.
Alright, but we all agreed that we liked social policies, right? Why can't we just leave them just like that? Civ 4 sytems + Civ 5 policies! Everyone wins!
Social Policies are great, but if you just gotta take into account its relationship with other game's systems. The combination of Civilization 4's manteinance system with Civ 5's social policies would give a huge advantage to big empires, making expansion the only strategy viable (you would need it for military, scientific AND cutlural victory) and thus, it needs to be tweaked. Hence why I propose this alternative system in order to replace social policies, based in the contribution of other fellow civver (whose name I can't remember for the life of me >.<):
Cultural city level
- Each city will have a certain cultural level, and social policies (now, "city traits") will be local, rather than empire-wide
- City culture will level up to 10 times maximum (reaching number 10 will mean that your city has gained a "legendary" status and it would a prequisite for archieving cultural victory)
- Every time that the city levels up, it will acquire one city trait in similar fashion to social policies, only this time, their effects will be local
- The social policy tree will have a net structure a la Beyond Earth, rather than a tree-like, branch structure. This way, you will be able to specialize a new city outright on its first leveling, rather than having to dwelve deeper into the social tree in order to "get to the good parts". Good city positioning and a couple of cultural traits will be enough for defining your new city's new role, even if older, more developed cities will have more bonuses and specialization options
- While individual cultural options will unlock as you research new technogies and build new world wonders (say, you will need to have reserached electricity if you want to pick the the "cinema festival" city trait) there won't be entire "SP trees" waiting to be unlocked trought science, in order to mitigate the "science is everything" problem
- Keep in mind, however, that there will be far more city traits avaible rather than the maximum 10 slots per city. That means that you won't be able to have every single city trait active in every city and thus, you will have to weight your choices carefully, for picking one city trait will mean to leave others
- This new cultural system will make the whole "cities as long term investments" ring more true than ever, rewarding both large and small empires, allowing a flexible degree of specialization in all your empire regardless of its size, yet allowing for small civilizations to be competitive in the cultural race too since SP will be local rather than empire-wide.
So what do you guys think of each sytem? Which ideas of your own do you have for developing expansion limit mechanisms? Go and share them!