Tech rate penalty for number of cities
- Thread starter Noodz
- Start date
blizzrd
Micromanager
Up to and including 10 cities, no penalty. Each city after your 10th, penalties apply.
At least that is how it was in RFC, not sure if Leoreth altered it for DoC.
At least that is how it was in RFC, not sure if Leoreth altered it for DoC.
clark k
Chieftain
i read somewhere on the forum that it was 8 cities in DoC
Akbarthegreat
Angel of Junil
AFAIK, it is 10. Might be wrong though.
iOnlySignIn
Prince$s
I've argued before that the threshold should be lower (8 or even 6 works), but the slope should be less steep. The result is that:
(1) It will be less easy to abuse the threshold by having exactly 10 megacities, with a civ such as China or Rome;
(2) Domination players (>25 cities) don't have to suffer absurd late game tech rate penalties (but of course, the penalty is still there, just less) and rely entirely on Espionage.
In general I feel that would diversify gameplay for many civs, if not all.
Akbarthegreat
Angel of Junil
I completely agree. In my last emperor England game, each city above ten gave me about 1100 more beakers to research on electricity!
strijder20
Wallowing in irony
I think that the amount of EP you need to steal a tech depends on your beaker cost for that tech, and that espionage is thus equally as bad as research when having a huge empire.
iOnlySignIn
Prince$s
True, but you get various discounts in Espionage missions due to factors like Open Borders, Espionage Points Spent, Stationary Spy, etc. which you don't have with Research. And there is Lubyanka.
Actually the only drawback of late game Espionage is the "Spy returns to capital after mission" mechanic which is really stupid, unrealistic, and annoying. It makes it better for you to delete Spies after mission and rebuild them in your border cities instead (before you have Airports, anyway). I see other mods which have abolished this mechanism (Spies stay where they were after mission is finished). I suggest we abolish it for DoC as well.
Yes, that and the fact that espionage buildings yield lots of espionage (+18
+75%), makes espionage really useful for large empires.I agree, or return to closest city. Super-spies would be great addition to DoC.
Akbarthegreat
Angel of Junil
A quick question: Does the same penalty apply for the AI?
And IMHO, I fell that it's worst drawback is it discourages historical colonial empires. Why settle Australia and Africa/conquer India as the British when you can get 3 cities in England, 3 in Lousiana, Tenochtitlan and Yax, 1 in N Brazil and Rio de la Plata?
And IMHO, I fell that it's worst drawback is it discourages historical colonial empires. Why settle Australia and Africa/conquer India as the British when you can get 3 cities in England, 3 in Lousiana, Tenochtitlan and Yax, 1 in N Brazil and Rio de la Plata?
Barbuesque
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2011
- Messages
- 306
As far as I understand the "vision" that rhyes had behind this rule, it was to make domination much harder, so I am not sure I agree with your 2nd point.
However I do agree that the megacities approach is just circumventing the mechanics; perhaps going by a mix of population and land would be more appropriate.
Bickerstaff
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2012
- Messages
- 35
I think the tech penalty should kick in much earlier, perhaps even with the second city, for the following reasons:
1) There are already plenty of incentives to expand without an increase research rate. You get increased wealth generation and production, as well as control of more resources.
2) This would increase the challenge for human players at the point where the game most often becomes boring -- the point where as, say, England, India, China or Russia, you have several well-developed cities in resource-rich locations and, with the current system, not only have good production but are easily out-teching everyone.
3) It would align civs' tech rates more closely with their average, rather than total, beaker production. This would better reflect human history, in which small, wealthy and highly urbanised regions such as Renaissance Italy, ancient Greece and the medieval and early modern Netherlands have tended to be more technologically innovative than there larger, more populous, but less urbanised neighbours.
4) It would avoid any arbitrary cut off point beyond which the human player is reluctant to build additional cities. Even if the penalty were applied earlier, at six or eight cities, as IOSI suggested, that would have a significant effect on many human players.
1) There are already plenty of incentives to expand without an increase research rate. You get increased wealth generation and production, as well as control of more resources.
2) This would increase the challenge for human players at the point where the game most often becomes boring -- the point where as, say, England, India, China or Russia, you have several well-developed cities in resource-rich locations and, with the current system, not only have good production but are easily out-teching everyone.
3) It would align civs' tech rates more closely with their average, rather than total, beaker production. This would better reflect human history, in which small, wealthy and highly urbanised regions such as Renaissance Italy, ancient Greece and the medieval and early modern Netherlands have tended to be more technologically innovative than there larger, more populous, but less urbanised neighbours.
4) It would avoid any arbitrary cut off point beyond which the human player is reluctant to build additional cities. Even if the penalty were applied earlier, at six or eight cities, as IOSI suggested, that would have a significant effect on many human players.
Akbarthegreat
Angel of Junil
But the consequence being that most of the times places like Africa, Australia and some parts of the Americas always remain empty.
Have you tried playing Emperor?
Maybe the tech penalty should depend on total population, not number of cities. This wouldn't address the urbanization issue mentioned by Bickerstaff, but it would avoid the arbitrary cutoff problem.
Regardless, the number of cities penalty wasn't to punish large empires: it was to stop them from becoming invincible, so the Netherlands is as advanced as Russia, not necessarily more advanced. In other words, the tech penalty is to counteract the advantage of having a bigger empire, so more cities isn't better or worse.
Regardless, the number of cities penalty wasn't to punish large empires: it was to stop them from becoming invincible, so the Netherlands is as advanced as Russia, not necessarily more advanced. In other words, the tech penalty is to counteract the advantage of having a bigger empire, so more cities isn't better or worse.
Akbarthegreat
Angel of Junil
Exactly. So I think that empires that were large as well as comparatively advanced should not receive that penalty, or at least with much lesser intensity.
ius_iurandi
Chieftain
This, with penalties applying on a gentle curve. Small empires become more, not less competitive. Large empires become more competitive relative to 10-city ones, however. At the same time, on any kind of enlongated geometric curve, astronomically large empires with many poor cities would still be in difficult technical straits. (Super-Russia, etc.)
As an aside, if one were to peg it to population, wouldn't the highly ahistorical "a lot of cities with one good tile and a scientist" situation be strangely competitive?
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