BjoernLars
Warlord
It seems that in many games, giant empires start outpacing all the other civilizations when it comes to technology research even though the majority of their cities lack a decent infrastructure. This is due to the fact that science is based off the number of citizens that you have. After Ms. Wu, her plethora of generals and the Peoples Liberation Army storm across a continent or two, they are going to be much more technologically advanced than Gandhi and his solid, well built, large five cities.
In previous Civ games, this idea was combated by the concept of corruption, stating that the farther a city was from the capital the less efficient it was with their production. Since corruption is gone, I think that a new system needs to be implemented to keep giant, bloated civilizations with poor infrastructures from running away with a technological lead.
I think giant warmonger civilizations should suffer when it comes to science. This would bring better balance to the game. Sure you produced a bunch of Longswordmen and trebuchets with your 16 iron resources, but Ive got a few well placed riflemen and cannons.
Civ V does try to combat this. One example is the National College, which has a prerequisite of a library in every city. This does increase science production by 50% in one city, but given the current state of science in the game, it is too little.
Here are a few ideas that I had to bring more balance to this game.
Puppet and Annexed City Penalties
After conquering a new city, the total science production in that city should be cut down to 1/3 of the total value, whether it has a puppet government or completely annexed. If the puppet government decides to build a library, the total bonus from that library would also cut by 2/3.
If the city is annexed, after the completion of the Courthouse the entire penalty to science production would be removed. This bonus would also help justified the large upkeep costs for the Courthouse.
Unhappiness
In Celevins post concerning a strategy about ignoring happiness and just letting your empire expand past your happiness limit, he states that you will have the highest science youll ever see.
In the first level of unhappiness, when you still can still use your happiness bucket reserves perhaps a small -10% penalty to science productions would be appropriate.
Once you have used up all of your happiness reserves your science levels should plummet with a -70% penalty.
Literacy Bonus
When you open your Demographics panel, the bottom category is the Literacy rate of your empire. A small civilization with a great infrastructure will have high level of literacy while a spread out bloodthirsty empire will have a low literacy rate.
To add balance to the game, a civilization should receive a bonus to the science production based on their literacy rate. The higher the literacy rate, the higher the bonus.
With bonuses that increase science production for everyone, the cost of discovering technologies, especially those later in the game, would have to be revalued to prevent the atomic bomb being dropped in 1640AD every game.
City Size Bonuses for Certain Science Buildings
As a city size grows and reaches certain population levels, bonuses could start to take effect, rewarding large cities with more science. These buildings would be libraries, universities and public schools.
When a city has the city size of 1~9, these buildings would have only their original benefits.
After a city becomes a size 10, each of these buildings would provide an additional +10% to science production.
At 20, an additional +10% would be added, and would continue to increase each time a city reaches the next multiple of 10.
Again, with this idea, the beaker costs for discovering a new technology would have to be recalculated to retain a balanced progression along the science tree.
One thing to keep in mind with this choice of science rebalancing is the Maritime City-State. This might not be the best choice since the food bonus provided my Maritime City-States can be used to abuse this bonus. Hopefully in the future they will rework the Maritime City-State to provide a more realistic bonus that wouldnt blow this rebalancing idea out of proportion.
Afterthoughts
Some people have noticed that AI has become more belligerent in this installment of civilization. Hopefully with an appropriate rebalance, the AI and sentient players wont feel that they will always have to achieve victory through means of bloodshed.
In my humble opinion, I think that conquering should be the hardest victory to achieve, but not impossible.
Also, with these ideas the complexity and math skills required for a gamer to understand and calculate on their own would not be to difficult.
These are just some different ideas on how balancing could be achieved for Civ V. Whether using some or all, I hope that these ideas might be able to help make Civ V a better game.
In previous Civ games, this idea was combated by the concept of corruption, stating that the farther a city was from the capital the less efficient it was with their production. Since corruption is gone, I think that a new system needs to be implemented to keep giant, bloated civilizations with poor infrastructures from running away with a technological lead.
I think giant warmonger civilizations should suffer when it comes to science. This would bring better balance to the game. Sure you produced a bunch of Longswordmen and trebuchets with your 16 iron resources, but Ive got a few well placed riflemen and cannons.
Civ V does try to combat this. One example is the National College, which has a prerequisite of a library in every city. This does increase science production by 50% in one city, but given the current state of science in the game, it is too little.
Here are a few ideas that I had to bring more balance to this game.
Puppet and Annexed City Penalties
After conquering a new city, the total science production in that city should be cut down to 1/3 of the total value, whether it has a puppet government or completely annexed. If the puppet government decides to build a library, the total bonus from that library would also cut by 2/3.
If the city is annexed, after the completion of the Courthouse the entire penalty to science production would be removed. This bonus would also help justified the large upkeep costs for the Courthouse.
Unhappiness
In Celevins post concerning a strategy about ignoring happiness and just letting your empire expand past your happiness limit, he states that you will have the highest science youll ever see.
In the first level of unhappiness, when you still can still use your happiness bucket reserves perhaps a small -10% penalty to science productions would be appropriate.
Once you have used up all of your happiness reserves your science levels should plummet with a -70% penalty.
Literacy Bonus
When you open your Demographics panel, the bottom category is the Literacy rate of your empire. A small civilization with a great infrastructure will have high level of literacy while a spread out bloodthirsty empire will have a low literacy rate.
To add balance to the game, a civilization should receive a bonus to the science production based on their literacy rate. The higher the literacy rate, the higher the bonus.
With bonuses that increase science production for everyone, the cost of discovering technologies, especially those later in the game, would have to be revalued to prevent the atomic bomb being dropped in 1640AD every game.
City Size Bonuses for Certain Science Buildings
As a city size grows and reaches certain population levels, bonuses could start to take effect, rewarding large cities with more science. These buildings would be libraries, universities and public schools.
When a city has the city size of 1~9, these buildings would have only their original benefits.
After a city becomes a size 10, each of these buildings would provide an additional +10% to science production.
At 20, an additional +10% would be added, and would continue to increase each time a city reaches the next multiple of 10.
Again, with this idea, the beaker costs for discovering a new technology would have to be recalculated to retain a balanced progression along the science tree.
One thing to keep in mind with this choice of science rebalancing is the Maritime City-State. This might not be the best choice since the food bonus provided my Maritime City-States can be used to abuse this bonus. Hopefully in the future they will rework the Maritime City-State to provide a more realistic bonus that wouldnt blow this rebalancing idea out of proportion.
Afterthoughts
Some people have noticed that AI has become more belligerent in this installment of civilization. Hopefully with an appropriate rebalance, the AI and sentient players wont feel that they will always have to achieve victory through means of bloodshed.
In my humble opinion, I think that conquering should be the hardest victory to achieve, but not impossible.
Also, with these ideas the complexity and math skills required for a gamer to understand and calculate on their own would not be to difficult.
These are just some different ideas on how balancing could be achieved for Civ V. Whether using some or all, I hope that these ideas might be able to help make Civ V a better game.
