Ancient ruins?

[SammyKhalifa]

Not every player in a game is going to get a culture or faith ruin. So those that do will be advantaged, and those that don't will be disadvantaged. Given it's based on sheer randomness, I would call that a distortion.

The logic that 'everyone has roughly the same chance of benefiting' means there isn't a distortion doesn't really work either. Imagine one of the ruins gave you an insta-win. Now, because it's random, every civ in the game would have an equal chance of hitting it, but it'd be clearly distortionary nonetheless.

You could say the same thing about good or bad starting positions, though. To me, that just makes ruins another "random"/unknown aspect that a player needs to adjust for. I wouldn't play without ruins any more than I'd play on a uniform grid map.

That's not to say that they couldn't maybe use some balancing. But I think it's good that some aspects are out of the player's total control.

 

[jg4444]

Huh? I've played every civ game since the first one came out. got 400 hours logged into civ 5 on steam and I've never once even considered turning huts off or realized that you could even.

Part of civ is huts. You deal with the good and the bad. Much like real history, random events made or broke certain civiliaations over the course of time. That's civ to me. Can't comprehend what the game would be without them.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Huh? I've played every civ game since the first one came out. got 400 hours logged into civ 5 on steam and I've never once even considered turning huts off or realized that you could even.

Part of civ is huts. You deal with the good and the bad. Much like real history, random events made or broke certain civiliaations over the course of time. That's civ to me. Can't comprehend what the game would be without them.

People sometimes turn huts off because they say they don't like the random element. I'm with you, though.

 

[Camikaze]

You could say the same thing about good or bad starting positions, though. To me, that just makes ruins another "random"/unknown aspect that a player needs to adjust for. I wouldn't play without ruins any more than I'd play on a uniform grid map.

That's not to say that they couldn't maybe use some balancing. But I think it's good that some aspects are out of the player's total control.

I think it's good for there to be some elements of randomness too, but that doesn't make them any less distortionary. It just means we're willing to live with that distortion for the sake of gameplay. Good and bad starting positions are indeed distortionary too, but there isn't much of a way around that. Remember, I said that I always play with ruins, but that I think the culture and faith ones need nerfing; this is because with those two ruins, I think the distortion is a bit too much (it can be to the extent that some people might reroll if they fail to get one of them). But I don't think that anything beyond that nerfing would be necessary.

 

[Buccaneer]

Not every player in a game is going to get a culture or faith ruin. So those that do will be advantaged, and those that don't will be disadvantaged. Given it's based on sheer randomness, I would call that a distortion.

The logic that 'everyone has roughly the same chance of benefiting' means there isn't a distortion doesn't really work either. Imagine one of the ruins gave you an insta-win. Now, because it's random, every civ in the game would have an equal chance of hitting it, but it'd be clearly distortionary nonetheless.

I would say that the distorted benefits anyone can get from the set of ruins are far less than the randomness of civ, barbs and resources placements. It doesn't take long for the results of a ruin (except for a new tech and perhaps pop) become meaningless or at best, a trivial bonus.

 

[mike1117112]

I agree that I wouldn't play without them. One of my favorite moments is when my scout his an upgrade ruin, especially if I don't have archery yet. It allows me to put off researching it early. I had one game I had three scouts get armed. I always play with raging barbarians on, so it sure helps to defend the homeland. I've popped a 90 faith once, but I hadn't heard of a ruin that gave 200 before. I'll have to look harder; my favorite part of the game is early exploration, discovering the world I dropped into. I put a lot of resources into early scouting. I just moved to King recently, as since G&K I started winning fairly easily on Prince. In my second game so far, and just in the exploring stage. I make the choice to commit resources to scouting and exploration for the ruins and CS meetings. I see it as a strategy choice; risk versus rewards, building scouts over infrastructure is a choice, the risk is high, but so can the rewards be.

 

[Camikaze]

I would say that the distorted benefits anyone can get from the set of ruins are far less than the randomness of civ, barbs and resources placements. It doesn't take long for the results of a ruin (except for a new tech and perhaps pop) become meaningless or at best, a trivial bonus.

The benefits of early gains compound throughout the game, they don't become meaningless. If you hit a faith ruin, you might get the first pick of Pantheon, and will be well on your way to getting the first pick of Religious Beliefs. That benefit certainly compounds throughout the game. An early social policy can give you a worker much earlier, allowing you to build improvements earlier, resulting in other benefits that compound.

 

[OmniPotent42]

The benefits of early gains compound throughout the game, they don't become meaningless. If you hit a faith ruin, you might get the first pick of Pantheon, and will be well on your way to getting the first pick of Religious Beliefs. That benefit certainly compounds throughout the game. An early social policy can give you a worker much earlier, allowing you to build improvements earlier, resulting in other benefits that compound.

Or you could be Spain and find GBR and El Dorado in the first 5 turns of the game giving you 2000 gold to invest. And I'm pretty sure that one compounds more than faith/culture huts. Civilization is a game of compounding, just like many other strategy games. Getting more research leads to getting more research, culture leads to more culture, etc. You can't take all compounding elements out of CiV.

 

[Camikaze]

Of course not, and I wasn't suggesting otherwise. My argument isn't that things shouldn't compound (I'm not sure how that would work anyway...?), but that given things compound, powerful random elements early in the game are probably best to avoid. If you got a faith ruin late in the game, it wouldn't make much difference. But given it's always going to be right near the beginning, it's far more powerful, and far more distortionary.

You'll note that a lot of people don't like El Dorado either.

 

[AriochIV]

The reason I dislike the Warrior --> Spearman upgrade is the upgrade paths. A Spearman now eventually becomes a Lancer while a Warrior becomes a Rifleman.

Well, I agree that the Spearman upgrade path is a bit silly... but... what are the odds that your first Warrior will survive until the end of the Renaissance? Especially when your early explorers can now be trapped by foreign borders, with no chance for passage until Civil Service? Doesn't seem to be a serious concern. Early in the game, when a single Warrior is your entire army, an upgrade to Spearman is a 27% increase to your total military strength! I'd much rather have a very early Spearman to trash barbarians with, than worry about whether I might someday have a very experienced Pikeman that I don't want to upgrade to a Lancer. The former may affect the outcome of a game; the latter almost never will.

 

[Buccaneer]

The benefits of early gains compound throughout the game, they don't become meaningless. If you hit a faith ruin, you might get the first pick of Pantheon, and will be well on your way to getting the first pick of Religious Beliefs. That benefit certainly compounds throughout the game. An early social policy can give you a worker much earlier, allowing you to build improvements earlier, resulting in other benefits that compound.

I was unclear. I was talking about the benefits of additional ruins founded after the first few. For example, if playing Polynesia on Archipelago, you'll hit about 18 ancient ruins on a standard size map. The first 5-6 can be value if you get the right RNG, the rest gets diminishing returns - like getting +20 culture when you are already getting +80 per turn or gold, not to mention the countless maps and barb camps ones.

 

[Tachii]

Well, I agree that the Spearman upgrade path is a bit silly... but... what are the odds that your first Warrior will survive until the end of the Renaissance? Especially when your early explorers can now be trapped by foreign borders, with no chance for passage until Civil Service? Doesn't seem to be a serious concern. Early in the game, when a single Warrior is your entire army, an upgrade to Spearman is a 27% increase to your total military strength! I'd much rather have a very early Spearman to trash barbarians with, than worry about whether I might someday have a very experienced Pikeman that I don't want to upgrade to a Lancer. The former may affect the outcome of a game; the latter almost never will.

I agree with this. Besides, I almost never build a spearmen, since warriors are so cheap to build and doesn't require any tech to do so. Missing that one warrior is negligible when it only takes like 3-6 turns to build one a few turn afterwards.