Are the production costs too high overall?

[Gehennas]

I know, there are already threads about disctict costs. I don't know if I am doing something wrong, but in my experience the production cost of everything except the wonders, workers and ancient units is too high.

Settlers: okay, I understand that the settler cost goes up to counter city spamming. However, it seems to be to much: while going wide seems to be the optimal strategy, settling more than 6 cities seems to be the waste of time: even with the discount policy the new settler takes too much valuable time of your city production and reduces its pop by 1. With the increased district cost, building the new city after classical era almost never worth it. In my last game there was a huge empty continent. I feel like the colonial time 50% settler/tile cost reduce card should do something more to encourage rapid expansion.

Districts + Buildings: Their cost increase seems to be too much. Also, I feel like the industrial district is a must-have district in every city - I personally don't think that this is right, as there should be some flexibility. May be the district itself and workshop also should extend their effect to 6 tiles without overlapping.

Units: I feel that unit price is high enough to make corps and armies useless. After ancient era I barely have production to make a frontline during the war. After my capital grows to 5 pop I usually need something like 4 turns to make a warrior. In the lategame I need 11 turns to build an infantry, which is supposed to be merged into corps/armies in that era. I think that unit cost curve should be more smooth. Also, I have a feeling that AI builds the most cost-effective units available - that's why it often has hordes of warriors/chariots up until midgame. It possibly chooses the most outdated units from the production point of view.

Do you have the same feelings, or am I missing something?
Thank you.

UPD: Those are observations for Standard Map Size, Standard Speed with 8 civs.

 

[Gigaz]

I think the game is mostly balanced around small size/standard speed and the scaling is totally off for options that are very different.

If you're playing huge maps, you want to expand much more and that becomes impossibly expensive. For low speed, the barbarians will rough you up with the same speed as they do on standard. Tech costs generally do not seem to scale with map size, even though you have more population on large maps, and population produces science. And then you have culture and production lagging behind.

 

[DocRock]

In my current game, I build a super industrial complex with 6 Industrial districts + Ruhr Valley. It works. But it seems to me like this is the only possible way of playing the game. And that's never good. Besides I love placing cities at cool locations and not just as remote objects for more industry.

 

[Gehennas]

I think the game is mostly balanced around small size/standard speed

Do you play with 8 civs on small map? I think I should try that.

In my current game, I build a super industrial complex with 6 Industrial districts + Ruhr Valley. It works. But it seems to me like this is the only possible way of playing the game. And that's never good. Besides I love placing cities at cool locations and not just as remote objects for more industry.

I was looking at Ruhr Valley in last game but I haven't built it intentionally to check if I can get high enough industry without it. It seems I can't. :\

I am also not sure if there is a problem with high industry costs or low science costs, but either way my science is far ahead of my production capacities even if I don't have any science-focused wonders and have only two empty (!) campuses.

 

[mnf]

I've only felt the impact of the district cost scaling and wonders, though. With specialized cities that have +4 adjacency bonus industrial zones and fully upgraded, plus mines and lumbermills everywhere else possible and some good food sources, I still had powerhouse production centers that can churn out tanks in 8 turns. The city only had industrial zone bonus from another one city. It did sit next to a wonder that provided double yields to surrounding tiles.

Another strategy is to use many small cities but all building the industrial zone around your capital. Once you upgrade the industrial zones properly, your capital becomes a powerhouse. I've never tried this, but have heard others swear by this.

I didn't like how the district costs scaled. In newer cities I basically didn't want to bother with districts. Wonders, also, seems generally underpowered for their cost, except a few ones like the Ruhr Valley.

PS: I play on standard map standard speed.

 

[Roxlimn]

You're not managing your Production right. In the early goings, an Industrial Zone isn't that necessary - It provides maybe +4 Prod, +6 with Workshop. You can make it up just by working 2 hills. In the later stages of the game, you have to plan your economy using Factories. Yes, you need Factories. If you don't Industrialize, you're going to get screwed. Welcome to history.

I've done 9, 12, 15 cities on a Standard Map. The problem isn't scaling or cost. The main problem is getting a Factory up in a new location. But that'a always been a problem with Civ. If you know what you're doing you CAN settle a late location pretty fast, but you have to know what you're doing.

You don't need an Industrial Zone in every city, but once Industrialization hits, you most certainly need Factories projecting into every city that matters. So a given city might not have an IZ itself, but it should still have two or three IZ's projecting hammers into it. If that's not happening, you're not planning it right.

You can't REX in this game, because the cost scales too fast. You CAN do a sustainable sort of expansion, considering creating a few Settlers every time the build time gets below 8. Yes, that happens.

If you play your cards right (literally), you should be making Knights and Samurai or Mamluks in 2 turns - 3 for Corps. If it's taking you 11 turns to make Infantry in your best military city (which should have a full Encampment), you're doing it wrong. Infantry is 430 hammers. A mediocre city in the late game should have something like 50-60 hammers, which means an Infantry should only take 9 turns, without any +% bonuses or City State boosts. A partially optimized Production City that doubles as a military center with an Encampment and some boosts should be at around 100-150 hammers before extras, so you should be making Infantry Armies there at about 5-8 turns, with individual Infantry taking about 4-6 turns.

In fact, I just finished a Greek game in which I assigned some podunk town in the middle of nowhere to make an Artillery Corps, and that took only 15 turns. I called it a nowhere town because it mainly had Faith and Science points, had only two Factories projecting into it (its own and a neighbor's), and was built mainly to take advantage of a nice mountain range for the Campus boost. It was mainly a Science town. My main production center in that game had 6 IZs projecting into it +18 hammers from the Factories, and another +24 from Power Plants, aside from the 60 it was taking in Worked Tiles. With its own IZ, and Ruhr Valley, it was going over 120 regularly.

 

[isau]

Production needs general balancing. The issue is bigger than just the industrial zone, it's that a lot is linked to how many Trade Routes you can spam (unlocked by Commercial zones). A Trade Route sent to a city with an Industrial zone generates quite a lot of hammers. On the plus side at least this is disruptable with war. If the AI ever learns to pillage effectively with its units it will also make war far more dangerous.

Personally I very strongly feel Factory bonuses should not stack with themselves. That's resulting in the design pattern for cities being too predictable. I think a max of one per city should be the hard limit, and production costs across the board brought into alignment with that.

 

[pietro1990]

Unlike civ 5 hills provide food. So mining lots of hils and working them is actually usefull.

 

[Roxlimn]

I don't see how it's predictable. Given the 36 tile limit, the 6 tile range for Factories, and the 3 tile range for minimum city distance, one strategy is to clump cities 3 or 4 to a region and then have each city or all but one in that region build an IZ. But that's not the only way to do it. You could network your cities in interconnected triangles - each city acts as a point in a hexagonal network. It doesn't concentrate production as well, requires favorable land, and relatively cheap IZs you can spam. Good for Germany, maybe not that good for everyone.

Or you could have 2 city clumps around one or two major capitals, each one projecting one or two Factories into the main cities - great for concentrating hammers and it saves the central cities a district - important when you need Farms for size and space for Wonders, Aerodomes, and other such items. Space is really an issue. You can't have all 12 Districts in a bunch of close-up cities. There's not enough space. If you always have IZs in each city, then you're giving up science, faith, culture, or functionality, usually two or three at once. Could be a sound plan, but it'd be boring if that's all you ever did.

 

[beorn]

Myself, I like it this way a lot. I see it as a much needed balance for technology, which otherwise becomes the one-size-fits-all solution to everything. Now, you can research fancy new stuff, but you either need production or money to reap the benefits -- and I find that much more interesting (as well as realistic).

As Roxlimn points out above, there are strategies available for handling this. Simply put, mine hills early, use the helpful policies, and industrialize with factories later. (Really hard to argue that a remotely realistic history sim ought to allow a civ smooth sailing without industrializing.)

My only concern at this point is that, even more than military tactics, the AI seems to need some work at keeping up on this. The AI civs seem to keep up on tech, but I'm not seeing them producing what they have researched. Hopefully, this will be improved as they patch the game, or, at worst, wait for a mod to do it.

 

[Plus Ultra]

I've found that theorical, ideal, city placement strategies are almost impossible to apply due to the randomness of the map scripts and all-important fresh water acess.

 

[Frank327]

I look at it the other way around, eureka's and inspirations are way too strong and because of that research and culture are too easy to come by. You can see it from how quickly both AI and players advance through the culture/tech tree. If research and civics take significantly longer (like they should) maybe the production is in a good spot.

 

[rpgalon]

Production is fine, it's the tech that goes too fast.

 

[dtfauss]

I look at it the other way around, eureka's and inspirations are way too strong and because of that research and culture are too easy to come by. You can see it from how quickly both AI and players advance through the culture/tech tree. If research and civics take significantly longer (like they should) maybe the production is in a good spot.

I think this is probably dead on. I suspect we tend to be pretty saavy at evaluating which eureka's and inspirations are easy to get and fall in our plans and which don't, pushing us up tech/civics wise dramatically, while the AI suffers in this regard.

 

[Big J Money]

You can't REX in this game, because the cost scales too fast.

Are you referring to the cost of the Settler itself?

 

[mnf]

I'd like to think of REX in this game as something that involves an early war. If you're not declaring war in the Ancient Era and taking out an AI or two, you're missing out. It also shows the big weakness in early game design. Archers are extremely easy to come by, and 4 archers plus 1 warrior can take down an AI capital in a few turns while also dealing with additional units and even city bombardment. AIs don't prioritize Archers and the Ancient Wall consistently during a siege. Sometimes they even pop a Builder in the middle of a siege. Heck even the AI tries to REX by war. Start a game and keep your military units to about 3 units. Just churn out Settlers and Builders, and military AIs will probably declare in the Ancient Era very soon. It feels as if the AIs will get to two or three cities and immediately turn to invade either a weak neighbor or a nearby city state.

But I like how Roxlimn above lays it out:

You're not managing your Production right. In the early goings, an Industrial Zone isn't that necessary - It provides maybe +4 Prod, +6 with Workshop. You can make it up just by working 2 hills. In the later stages of the game, you have to plan your economy using Factories. Yes, you need Factories. If you don't Industrialize, you're going to get screwed. Welcome to history.

I've done 9, 12, 15 cities on a Standard Map. The problem isn't scaling or cost. The main problem is getting a Factory up in a new location. But that'a always been a problem with Civ. If you know what you're doing you CAN settle a late location pretty fast, but you have to know what you're doing.

You don't need an Industrial Zone in every city, but once Industrialization hits, you most certainly need Factories projecting into every city that matters. So a given city might not have an IZ itself, but it should still have two or three IZ's projecting hammers into it. If that's not happening, you're not planning it right.

Indeed the problem I felt had always been setting districts in a new city. But if I actually learn the new game design, and apply that, I should be placing my industrial zones properly so that they project properly into other cities, and that alleviates (in the same way as real life) the district costs which represent infrastructure. It's still going to be a pain if we just plunk down a city in the middle of nowhere for the resources, but that's a trade off, a decision we have to make.

 

[dexters]

No. You really need to rely on factories / power plant area buffs to power your core. Then carefully placing mines next to them. There is actually an industrial heartland now in a civ game rather than an abstract collection of cities with high production

 

[Siptah]

I think production costs are high, but not too high. You just have to play a bit different in civvi than you're probably used to. Try to get some hills nearby and build mines, have some cities close together and industrial zones in all of them for wonder building/unit pumping core cities. Have lots of commercial districts/harbors for internal trade routes.

 

[Zhahz]

I've played 60+ hours and multiple games and FEEL the same way (that costs are too high) but I think it needs more time and/or a change in approach. I'm more of a builder and in Civ 5 I would build everything in all cities but in 6 I think specialization is more expected.

The overlap thing for factories helps but it comes pretty mid/late. It takes an eternity but industrial zones and their buildings everywhere is pretty much mandatory for me. For a while I didn't build generic mines but they and lumbermills help.

It also seems to be kind of a punishment / deterrent for going wide or conquering - the escalating costs of a variety of things chew you do either (along with amenity issues) slow you down sorta.

I can't seem to help but go wide every game because the AIs constantly start idiotic wars they can't possibly win and have to be punished - and the only way to truly stop their idiocy is to stomp them out of the game (thus increasing your city count). I've yet to be able to retain a small empire and avoid wars even when I clearly have superior troops defending everything. The AIs seem programmed to self destruct via war and say in the stone age for tech via stupid wars.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

Gold is a powerful resource now. Great People and everything but districts and religious folk can be bought with it. It is, by far, more powerful than hammers.

Give Rome a shot and build yourself a trade empire.

ETA: Things are not expensive in this game. By turn 200 it's very easy to have 500GPT. By turn 300 I had well over 1,500GPT.