The Three Playstyles

These are the goals for advantages the 3 Civ archetypes have in the Vanilla Enhanced Mod. This information was previously in an obscure place on the Strategy forum, so I decided to move it here.

One area where Vanilla Enhanced changes things is conquest. I feel conquering is too easy in vanilla Civ 5, and as a conqueror myself, I like making it more challenging.

Vanilla does not give military handicaps for the AI, so combat is the best (and often only) way to go on harder vanilla difficulties. AI economic strength outshadows military strength. In the Vanilla Enhanced mod, fighting the AI militarily is as challenging as fighting them economically.

In Civ 4 there was a tradeoff between economic and military power. Our economy dropped from rapid conquest. In Civ 5 each occupied city adds to science/gold/etc, so conquerors have advantages in both economic and military strength. To balance this in VEM, good diplomatic relations provides science bonuses from shared research. This means peaceful leaders have more advanced but less experienced troops, and vice versa for conquerors. This tradeoff makes conquest more challenging.

Less population is killed off when a city is captured, but the refugees spawn a partisan for the defender. This increase in population doubles the city's long-term power after it comes out of resistance, while increasing the short-term downsides. I also created a tradeoff between Occupy vs Puppet vs Raze so each option has advantages and disadvantages. Occupation is good for large cities and puppeting is good for small ones.

I have an issue with conquest based civs being too focused on "military" though... Domination victories are often the hardest to win when playing on large/huge maps, and I've never come close to winning one (not that I ever try that hard). With the nerf to conquests (i.e. science from puppet states = 0 except from buildings and longer resistance periods), and the fact that conquest is harder than in vanilla (partisans), it seems to be a very unrewarding playstyle. puppet state spam can never give as much science as say 4 tall cities, each one with all the science buildings in place. Add that to the fact that conquest civs have trouble getting DoFs and hence research agreements, I think that they're more disadvantaged compared to civs using the other 2 playstyles. A large army that struggles to gain a large empire which is composed of inefficient cities anyway doesn't exactly inspire fear in their more peace-loving neighbours.

Occupied cities have no science penalty. Higher city capture population is a short-term disadvantage (resistance), but a long-term advantage (bigger city afterward). I've revised my original post to explain things better.

Thalassicus said:

Occupied cities have no science penalty. Higher city capture population is a short-term disadvantage (resistance), but a long-term advantage (bigger city afterward). I've revised my original post to explain things better.

Click to expand...

But occupied cities give us a really huge unhappiness penalty until the courthouse goes up, especially if the population is high. Occupying outright can more or less destroy your happiness values while puppeting before annexing to prepare for the unhappiness hit results in long resistance times. I was hoping that it might be possible to build conquest based empires like that of the Aztecs, where the capital of Tenochtitlan held sway over a few hundred puppet states/ vassal cities, depending on them for its income and resources, kind of a pyramid structure, different from both tall and wide empires. While I don't have much of a problem with removing science for puppets, I still think that reduced unhappiness and resistance times from them would make conquest more fun, as lightning campaigns can then be carried out without necessarily boosting the conqueror's science. The conqueror would then be strengthened only economically and not militarily/scientifically.

Geppenguin said:

But occupied cities give us a really huge unhappiness penalty until the courthouse goes up, especially if the population is high. Occupying outright can more or less destroy your happiness values while puppeting before annexing to prepare for the unhappiness hit results in long resistance times. I was hoping that it might be possible to build conquest based empires like that of the Aztecs, where the capital of Tenochtitlan held sway over a few hundred puppet states/ vassal cities, depending on them for its income and resources, kind of a pyramid structure, different from both tall and wide empires. While I don't have much of a problem with removing science for puppets, I still think that reduced unhappiness and resistance times from them would make conquest more fun, as lightning campaigns can then be carried out without necessarily boosting the conqueror's science. The conqueror would then be strengthened only economically and not militarily/scientifically.

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This is just a thought, but would a special capital building (or UB?) that reduces any of the following be a good idea?

* reduces cost of courthouses
* OR buffs the effects of courthouses
* reduces by % amount of unhappiness from annexation/resistance
* reduces the unhappiness created by puppets
* OR increases the gold, science, or culture produced by puppets

We could call it a "capital courthouse" or something. it could be civ specific, or available via policy (honor tree?) or like a national wonder or even (probably not possible) only available after you've created your first great general via combat experience gained or only available after you have X number of puppets under control...

This all depends on the mechanism for availablility and the flavor of the benefits provided, but outside of defense/experience buildings and other gold bonus buildings, this would give the conquer playstyle a little bit more complexity.


Feel free to take this idea wherever you like (or trash it), but I recall some talk before regarding recent polls that Aztecs weren't doing as well (due to honor tree buffs? ---which are awesome, btw). I'd imagine that such a building could be a UB for Aztecs given the scenario described above.

All that said, this is all coming from someone who generally plays peaceful/expansion, so i might be imposing my flavor on the conquerer playstyle...

I think the overall outline in the first post is sensible - including that specialists should tend to favor tall empire strategies.

Thus, part of why I dislike the changes to specialists (higher yields, lower GPPs) is that the higher yields means specialists are worth using in wide or military builds as a direct substitute for working tiles, and that the gain for specialists in tall from having lots of specialists of the same type in the same city that thus produce great people is weakened (because you get fewer great people with lower GPP per specialist).

But occupied cities give us a really huge unhappiness penalty until the courthouse goes up, especially if the population is high.

Click to expand...

A large city can build a courthouse faster. And high unhappiness during the courthouse structure is a feature.

reduced unhappiness and resistance times from them would make conquest more fun, as lightning campaigns can then be carried out without necessarily boosting the conqueror's science. The conqueror would then be strengthened only economically

Click to expand...

I think it is a good design goal to specifically block mass lightning conquest. That is precisely what we are trying to prevent. Conquest should not boost you economically, it should be economically costly in the short term, and should require happiness infrastructure to be able to support it and it should take time to assimilate foreign populations (eg: you only annex/occupy/work on a courthouse in one city at at a time).

*Edit*
I also kinda dislike how Wonders have been shifted so much towards providing happiness, rather than specific bonuses, and how relatively unimportant great people are now. Often I'll hardly ever generate any great people normally, and almost the only ones I get will be from the free ones from policies.

Vanilla does not give military handicaps for the AI, so combat is the best (and often only) way to go on harder vanilla difficulties. AI economic strength outshadows military strength. In the Vanilla Enhanced mod, fighting the AI militarily is as challenging as fighting them economically.

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Could you say what is changed to give AI "military strength bonuses on higher difficulties", as this seems to read? I haven't seen AI bonuses unit strenghts. Is it "just" free XP to AI units, or something hidden somewhere that I've missed?

1. Starting units
2. Experience
3. Sight range

These bonuses increase for AIs as the difficulty level goes up. I focused on bonuses that are obvious to the human... nothing hidden like +X% strength in combat. The experience boost gives it in a transparent way through promotions.

Since VEM made some changes last spring or summer, my usual bests playing tall for Science were wins went from a best of 244 turns to the 280+ turn range. Playing wide and not peaceful, I noticed that I could achieve the same results with a number of civs – not just Babylon and Korea. I then tried France and had a breakthrough game, winning a SS victory in T253 via early expansion and some conquest.

This easily stood as my best until I tried Songhai, playing my usual Emperor, on v126. I launched my SS in T248 – a significant improvement over my prior record – but that doesn’t do the game justice. I had 11 cities, about half conquered. My pop edge was 25.9M to 15.3M to the runner up. And I wound up with a 21-tech lead over the #2. That gap blew me away.

The tech lead was partly due to there being no runaway civs, and no tech powerhouses. My opponents were Greece, Rome and France and my continent, and England, Denmark, Japan and China on the other. But it’s just as easy to argue that I had my hands full fighting from the start against those three bullies – and I was at war with all three for pretty much the entire early part of the game, precluding not just RA’s but trading of any kind. I would have greatly benefited from one peaceful, tech-focused neighbor.

I used my standard early strategy of building the Pyramids and GL (as well as the HG), while fending off the enemy with chariots. An unexpected peace offer from Rome for 2200g gave me the gold I needed to buy CS allies and insta-build monuments and mosques in my new cities. Beelining to Mandekalu (upgraded chariots) I then tore through the continent, building up a large empire and becoming filthy rich selling the rest. Unlike some games, I made sure I got a ship out early to meet the other civs and CS. It was no problem then building every wonder I wanted.

The key elements in this game (and my basic wide approach) is to build key wonders (Pyramids, GL, PT, SoL, and preferably HG and BB) while boosting culture (where France and Songhai shine early) to blow through the policy trees. Patronage is extremely powerful in this approach because of the science boost, and even more the happiness one. In both games I filled Liberty, Patronage, and almost all (or all) of Order while holding on to the last SP in Enlightenment for the win.

I post this in this thread because my results show not just the outsized power of culture in science games, but that the “3 playstyles” don’t seem to hold up as advertised. (Ahriman noted this earlier.) Specifically, my wide empires have no problem getting most of the GW’s I want, and as much science (or more) as a tall empire. And of course they have more gold. This leads me to believe that tall empires need a boost. The proposed excess-happiness bonus will help, but I will do a long-term comparison playing v130 to see precisely what the Tradition tree needs to make up for the “wide” edge. (The early guess is to make up for the quantity of specialists in wide empires.)

I agree with you, which is why I seek out new ways to give research advantages to peaceful empires whenever possible. This thread simply lists the goals for the project, not the current state of the game.

This makes me reconsider a recent increase to the cost of research agreements. People were saying RAs are too powerful... but from what you're saying they're too weak. RA's and DoFs are nearly impossible to get with the militaristic empire. If a militaristic approach gets better results than a peaceful RA/DoF approach, then perhaps RA/DoFs feel overpowered but are actually balanced?

With world wonders I've found most balance issues arise from the AI not valuing them correctly. Do you think it should try harder to get some like the Pyramids? Alternatively, I could adjust the cost of these wonders if you feel they are too central to the game.

I like every game to feature every aspect of the Civ genre: expansion, research, culture, conquest, and so on. Policies are important for every playstyle, which is why culture isn't listed under a specific playstyle.

Thalassicus said:

This makes me reconsider a recent increase to the cost of research agreements. People were saying RAs are too powerful... but from what you're saying they're too weak. RA's and DoFs are nearly impossible to get with the militaristic empire. If a militaristic approach gets better results than a peaceful RA/DoF approach, then perhaps RA/DoFs feel overpowered but are actually balanced?

With world wonders I've found most balance issues arise from the AI not valuing them correctly. Do you think it should try harder to get some like the Pyramids? Alternatively, I could adjust the cost of these wonders if you feel they are too central to the game.

I like every game to feature every aspect of the Civ genre: expansion, research, culture, conquest, and so on. Policies are important for every playstyle, which is why culture isn't listed under a specific playstyle.

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Agreed on the last point. While I sometimes want a fast tall game, my favorite way to play is for Science with regular periods of warfare and conquest. In this way, I feel like I'm getting it all.

I'm okay with some GWs being better than others, and don't think the Pyramids and GL are OP, or even particularly synergistic in general. They just happen to work well with a Liberty start in a Science game. I get both in 70% of my games, and have three cities as quickly or faster than any of the AI. The solution to a not-large problem would probably be what you suggest: having the AI value these somewhat more. (They seem to like Zeus a lot.)

With regard to RA's and DoF's, here is what I've found that could be useful to you: it is not always difficult to get RA's even while viewed as "hostile"... but it is harder than you would imagine to get and keep DoF's, even if you're peaceful. Since I don't think you can adjust the likelihood of keeping RA's for peaceful civs*, my suggestion would be to further boost the benefits of DoF's, while leaving RA's as is.

* Edit: this is because the preferential RA's - those from civs with lots of beakers - tend to be with civs who view themselves as your rivals.

Agreed with Txurce on DoF's. I find them particularly difficult to acquire, even when being peaceful, whereas RA's are much more a matter of gold.

I had the same idea today, and had just boosted DoF rewards to +100%.

Thinking some more about the original guidelines, I came up with another suggestion to better balance tall civs vs wide scientific ones. As is, wides benefit more from specialists than you may have envisioned. But they also definitely benefit from GWs - about as much as tall civs do. This is because early in the game they are just as likely to build one, and as the game progresses, having a tech lead usually gives them the same edge in building a key one like the PT.

My proposal mirrors raising the tech rate, then factoring in happiness: raise the hammer cost of GWs, then boost the benefit of the Monarchy SP. This way the AI still does well due to its bonuses, but Tradition civs have a major edge on Liberty civs in the Wonder-building race with the AI.

On a possibly related note, the recent WWGD happiness nerf to the AI seems to have slowed their expansion, as intended. I consequently noticed in my single v130 game that the AI was building GWs later than usual. After some more experimentation, you may want to consider further boosting the AI's era-based bonuses (starting with Classical) to make up for the welcome re-balancing of WWGD.

albie_123 said:

Agreed with Txurce on DoF's. I find them particularly difficult to acquire, even when being peaceful, whereas RA's are much more a matter of gold.

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Let me third this notion. I can be two turns out of a war and the AI will ask me for a RA, and I can almost always get them with AIs I'm not at war with (sometimes I may have to throw in extra gold beyond the era cost, but really hardly ever).

Txurce, by GWs you mean WWs = World Wonders?

wobuffet said:

Txurce, by GWs you mean WWs = World Wonders?

Click to expand...

Yes - Great Wonders (GW).

Thalassicus said:

These are the goals for advantages the 3 Civ archetypes have in the Vanilla Enhanced Mod. This information was previously in an obscure place on the Strategy forum, so I decided to move it here.

• Peaceful - Tall
  (4-5 cities with high populations)
  • Science
  • Specialists
  • Wonders
  .
• Peaceful - Wide
  (6 or more cities with lower populations)
  • Science
  • Resources
  • Gold
  .
• Conquerors
  • Military
  • Resources
  • Gold

One area where Vanilla Enhanced changes things is conquest. I feel conquering is too easy in vanilla Civ 5, and as a conqueror myself, I like making it more challenging.

Vanilla does not give military handicaps for the AI, so combat is the best (and often only) way to go on harder vanilla difficulties. AI economic strength outshadows military strength. In the Vanilla Enhanced mod, fighting the AI militarily is as challenging as fighting them economically.

In Civ 4 there was a tradeoff between economic and military power. Our economy dropped from rapid conquest. In Civ 5 each occupied city adds to science/gold/etc, so conquerors have advantages in both economic and military strength. To balance this in VEM, good diplomatic relations provides science bonuses from shared research. This means peaceful leaders have more advanced but less experienced troops, and vice versa for conquerors. This tradeoff makes conquest more challenging.

Less population is killed off when a city is captured, but the refugees spawn a partisan for the defender. This increase in population doubles the city's long-term power after it comes out of resistance, while increasing the short-term downsides. I also created a tradeoff between Occupy vs Puppet vs Raze so each option has advantages and disadvantages. Occupation is good for large cities and puppeting is good for small ones.

Click to expand...

As I am beginning to take this game to a little higher level of analysis and thought, I find myself wanting to get much better. I wonder if some of you might help me with a couple of things:

1) For each playstyle, in general, what are you doing for the first 100 turns? What are your primary goals? Which leaders do you prefer? Techs, Wonders, Diplomacy, Scouting, etc.? Navy or land based units? Are you ignoring happiness and selling all of your luxury items ASAP? Are you rushing a close neighbor as early as possible? Are you beelining to bronze working to see where the iron is before putting down your second city? Also, what policies do you emphasize? How important are CS's this early? Maritime vs Cultural vs Militaristic.

Also - starting locations. What are your highest priorities? Do you ever take two or three turns before putting a city down? If so, why?

PS - Where does a culture victory fit in to these playstyles? I am assuming Peaceful Tall, but I could be wrong with the puppet mechanic now.

2) Mid to late game, what are you emphasizing? What buildings do you build or buy in your new cities to accomplish this? What are your policy choices now that you have gotten the early choices out of the way? How do you use specialists - this is the biggest one for me, as until lately, I haven't messed with them a lot. One thing I have never done much of is conquering a city and then selling it - is that a huge leak?

I realize that these questions are VERY situational as different tech paths depend a huge amount on location (resources, inland vs coast, proximity of neighbors, etc.). But if you could just think about the questions in general, that would be a great help to me.

Also - where can I find the best VEM video LP's? I have found two or three, but they are fairly old and not entirely helpful with the many changes.

Thanks in advance.

I follow something similar to the strategy I outlined for Mongolia in the strategy forum. It hasn't changed much since I wrote that guide because there's three basic choices early on for a warmonger like me:

• Attack nearby citystates.
• Attack a major civ.
• Peacefully expand, then attack later.

The main thing changed since I wrote that strategy is barbarians are much more important now in VEM. This is my typical starting build order:

• Honor opener policy

1. Scout
2. Scout
3. Worker

1. Explore for #2 city site with Scouts. Once site is located...
2. Pull back 2x scouts 1x warrior to gang up on barbarian camps.

I usually start killing camps around the same time they start invading civilized territory. I play on normal size / normal speed / emperor difficulty. After that I'll invest further in Honor if I expect an ancient or classical war. That's typically if I'm within 10-20 tiles of a good military target. If there's no decent citystate or major-civ targets in a reasonable range, I max out Liberty to fast expand.

======

I always place my capital city immediately, unless it's a Game of the Month map, which are designed with multiple viable early options. Culture victory is either peaceful-tall or peaceful-wide. I've had successful culture victories with both types. However, any significant warfare slows things down too much, so a peaceful game is ideal if you want to go full-culture. Midgame depends a lot on circumstances of the game. I adapt to the situation at hand, without any one fixed strategy. VEM is built to encourage and reward flexible strategies.

I'd highly recommend trying the Game of the Month: VEM maps on the strategy forum. Though the contests are over, the games and discussions there are valuable sources of information.

Thal, does that mean that in situations where you're playing for Conquest but find yourself with a lot of empty space, you put off filling out the Honor tree until much later in the game? I can see how that would help create a strong engine for your civ, but unless there's a strong effort to generate culture, it would seem to put Professional Army too far into the future.

On a side note, an Honor start works for very well for the Aztecs even when not going for a Conquest victory, due to the combined culture boosts from barb kills.