Corruption, City Maintenance, Global Happiness : WHY ?

[Naokaukodem]

Why do all those limitations have existed in the Civilization series ? Why not just let the factions expand and grab power from those expansions, for yet more raging wars ???

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Because they wan't the game not become one sided all to quickly

In pandora first contact, a similar game to civilization they don't really punish you in any way by founding more cities but the growth rate is empire wide and a one city empire grow as quickly as a multy city empire, pretty intresting and probably supperior and more fun then any limitations that civlization have on city expansion

 

[Vitruvius]

If there are no such limitations, once a civ starts rolling, it will not stop.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[Naokaukodem]

Because they wan't the game not become one sided all to quickly

In pandora first contact, a similar game to civilization they don't really punish you in any way by founding more cities but the growth rate is empire wide and a one city empire grow as quickly as a multy city empire, pretty intresting and probably supperior and more fun then any limitations that civlization have on city expansion

Ah, I wouldn't think about that. So speed would be key factor ? That's pretty odd as I feel things are especially slow in V.

In pandora first contact you mean cities grow slower individually the more they are, or they just grow the same rate individually no matter how many they are ?

If there are no such limitations, once a civ starts rolling, it will not stop.

Seems pretty much the case already. In V GH only seems to differ player's strategy while AI can roll all it wants. In multiplayer players use to be shy due to G.H., games are not really exciting. (or still one sided, for example when you start near Rome with Iron that you don't have)

I think diplomacy would fit better to prevent rollings, as well as science independent of size + science diffusion.

 

[dopingman]

Why do all those limitations have existed in the Civilization series ? Why not just let the factions expand and grab power from those expansions, for yet more raging wars ???

The restriction in CiV is so extensive because up to CIV the dominant strategy was to spam cities. Lots of them and all over the place. Heck, even in base CiV ICS was effective if you overcame the initial setbacks, all those cities produced an insane amount of everything as soon as they got rolling. Unfortunately CiV BNW overdid it a little with the restrictions and there are only one or two viable Civs in the game that can efficiently go wide or semi-tall.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Ah, I wouldn't think about that. So speed would be key factor ? That's pretty odd as I feel things are especially slow in V.

In pandora first contact you mean cities grow slower individually the more they are, or they just grow the same rate individually no matter how many they are ?

If you remove the penalaties of having lot of cities and keep the advantages of having lot of cities then the game will not be fun, the strategy would be expand expand expand win from turn 1.

In Pandora each population give you one growth point no matter what, then also your cities can produce growth at the cost of not producing other things like military.

To grow a pop a city must gather enought growth point, how many is calculated in how large your global population is, in civilization games how many people you have globaly do not effect how much a pop will cost, only how many people you have in your city which is why expansion is so strong in civ.

Example in pandora an empire with a 2 pop city, that city will pay as much to increase its pop as a 1 pop city in a 2 pop empire if you understand what I mean.

Also pandora use something called migration meaning a city can transfer some of its growth points to another city this is done automaticly basicly cities with low moral (happines) will migrate to cities with high moral.

In both civilization and pandora people are power but two differen't growth systems mean differen't limitations.

 

[Acken]

If you don't limit expansion, then you create a new limit:
"To win I must expand indefinitely"

You don't achieve more liberty for the player doing that.

 

[Iberian]

While I think the current system is a little overkill on stopping expansion there is merit in the idea. There are many nations in history who would have loved to conquer the entire world but there are always problems that arise and prevent it.

Coming up with game mechanics that work to limit world domination in a way that reflects history is the hard part.

 

[joncnunn]

Civ II Corruption: Went away entirely moment you hit a modern govt, and never was a real problem to begin with.

Civ III Corruption: Here if you founded cities far enough away they could be hopelessly corrupt. However since unless you were infilling it couldn't possibly make your empire worse, it wasn't much of a break on self expansion. Indeed, normal tactic was an early REX to all intended pre war city sites.

Civ IV City Maintenance: This worked really well until it got broken by Corporations. Instead of a single REX, most popular were mini REXes, then improve those cities to fix the economy followed by another round.

Civ V Global Happiness: At CD release, happiness was so abundant this was laughable as a limit. It was fixed about a year after the CD came out. G&K and BNW both added happiness sources, but it really wasn't Global Happiness alone that led to the 4 cities total self founded rule, but instead the following:
1. 100% of all current self founded cities need building X to build each National Wonder (as opposed to Civ IV needing a fixed 5 copies)
2. Puppets don't count for purposes of needing yet another copy of buildings X, Y, and Z to build the remaining National Wonders
3. Puppets don't count for purpose of acquiring new social policies. (This is much less a concern with BNW though)
4. Global Happiness was not only tied to Golden Ages but is the intended primary source of them.

It's much easier all around if end goal is a large empire to start by only building 4 cities Tradition and then go conquering and at least initially puppeting the cities the AI built for you that are good while razing the bad ones. (Even if you eventually annex you can pick the timing where it won't interfere with National wonder construction)

I'm thinking for Civ VI that Global Happiness could work properly as a brake to early expansion without being a permanent wall if they simply eliminated the 100% rule for national wonder and returned it to a fixed flat number and so that after you had happiness under control you could self found an additional city at a time without interfering with national wonder construction. (At the moment all having a surplus in happiness means is that if you are a peaceful player your Golden Ages were now become more frequent and if you are a warmonger then its time to conquer an AI city or two.)

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Civ II Corruption: Went away entirely moment you hit a modern govt, and never was a real problem to begin with.

Civ III Corruption: Here if you founded cities far enough away they could be hopelessly corrupt. However since unless you were infilling it couldn't possibly make your empire worse, it wasn't much of a break on self expansion. Indeed, normal tactic was an early REX to all intended pre war city sites.

Civ IV City Maintenance: This worked really well until it got broken by Corporations. Instead of a single REX, most popular were mini REXes, then improve those cities to fix the economy followed by another round.

Civ V Global Happiness: At CD release, happiness was so abundant this was laughable as a limit. It was fixed about a year after the CD came out. G&K and BNW both added happiness sources, but it really wasn't Global Happiness alone that led to the 4 cities total self founded rule, but instead the following:
1. 100% of all current self founded cities need building X to build each National Wonder (as opposed to Civ IV needing a fixed 5 copies)
2. Puppets don't count for purposes of needing yet another copy of buildings X, Y, and Z to build the remaining National Wonders
3. Puppets don't count for purpose of acquiring new social policies. (This is much less a concern with BNW though)
4. Global Happiness was not only tied to Golden Ages but is the intended primary source of them.

It's much easier all around if end goal is a large empire to start by only building 4 cities Tradition and then go conquering and at least initially puppeting the cities the AI built for you that are good while razing the bad ones. (Even if you eventually annex you can pick the timing where it won't interfere with National wonder construction)

I'm thinking for Civ VI that Global Happiness could work properly as a brake to early expansion without being a permanent wall if they simply eliminated the 100% rule for national wonder and returned it to a fixed flat number and so that after you had happiness under control you could self found an additional city at a time without interfering with national wonder construction. (At the moment all having a surplus in happiness means is that if you are a peaceful player your Golden Ages were now become more frequent and if you are a warmonger then its time to conquer an AI city or two.)

Would you recommend using a mod which lowers the 100% rule for number of cities for national wonders? I think I saw one that allows you to have a single city that is exempt from the national wonders requirement.

Thanks in advance.

 

[joncnunn]

Would you recommend using a mod which lowers the 100% rule for number of cities for national wonders? I think I saw one that allows you to have a single city that is exempt from the national wonders requirement.

Thanks in advance.

The Community Expansion mods are the only ones that I'm aware of that has done something like this. The same mods has a lot of other changes mixed in though.
As I recall, that got around their not being a DLL by making a hack into the accessible sql code to do math and set it to 67 percent. So if you have 4, 5, or 6 cities you could skip one. (The later due to the tiny difference between 66.6666.... and 67) But starting at 7 you could skip two.

It would lead to a significant speed up in getting National Wonders completed. (If the AIs are declining to sign DOFs with you then it can be difficult to cash buy the last copy needed of a national wonder). It would definitely be enough to cause a player with no coal that saw an open city spot near coal to settle it.

 

[Naokaukodem]

The restriction in CiV is so extensive because up to CIV the dominant strategy was to spam cities.

If you remove the penalaties of having lot of cities and keep the advantages of having lot of cities then the game will not be fun, the strategy would be expand expand expand win from turn 1.

I don't see it as a problem, and it is pretty realistic. In Civ5 you could as well say that the dominant strategy is to spam population and that's not fun because of it...

In Pandora each population give you one growth point no matter what, then also your cities can produce growth at the cost of not producing other things like military.

To grow a pop a city must gather enought growth point, how many is calculated in how large your global population is, in civilization games how many people you have globaly do not effect how much a pop will cost, only how many people you have in your city which is why expansion is so strong in civ.

Example in pandora an empire with a 2 pop city, that city will pay as much to increase its pop as a 1 pop city in a 2 pop empire if you understand what I mean.

Also pandora use something called migration meaning a city can transfer some of its growth points to another city this is done automaticly basicly cities with low moral (happines) will migrate to cities with high moral.

In both civilization and pandora people are power but two differen't growth systems mean differen't limitations.

So you are saying that in Pandora the food basket is global ? Seems pretty good to me as you are not more penalysed by grabbing more land than staying with only one city.

If you don't limit expansion, then you create a new limit:
"To win I must expand indefinitely"

You don't achieve more liberty for the player doing that.

I wouldn't call it a limit. Not even a necessity. It's the domination victory only. After that, it depends on the shape of the victory conditions, and if for example science or culture directly depends on the number of cities/population you have.

Civ II Corruption: Went away entirely moment you hit a modern govt, and never was a real problem to begin with.

Civ III Corruption: Here if you founded cities far enough away they could be hopelessly corrupt. However since unless you were infilling it couldn't possibly make your empire worse, it wasn't much of a break on self expansion. Indeed, normal tactic was an early REX to all intended pre war city sites.

Civ IV City Maintenance: This worked really well until it got broken by Corporations. Instead of a single REX, most popular were mini REXes, then improve those cities to fix the economy followed by another round.

Civ V Global Happiness: At CD release, happiness was so abundant this was laughable as a limit. It was fixed about a year after the CD came out. G&K and BNW both added happiness sources, but it really wasn't Global Happiness alone that led to the 4 cities total self founded rule, but instead the following:
1. 100% of all current self founded cities need building X to build each National Wonder (as opposed to Civ IV needing a fixed 5 copies)
2. Puppets don't count for purposes of needing yet another copy of buildings X, Y, and Z to build the remaining National Wonders
3. Puppets don't count for purpose of acquiring new social policies. (This is much less a concern with BNW though)
4. Global Happiness was not only tied to Golden Ages but is the intended primary source of them.

It's much easier all around if end goal is a large empire to start by only building 4 cities Tradition and then go conquering and at least initially puppeting the cities the AI built for you that are good while razing the bad ones. (Even if you eventually annex you can pick the timing where it won't interfere with National wonder construction)

I'm thinking for Civ VI that Global Happiness could work properly as a brake to early expansion without being a permanent wall if they simply eliminated the 100% rule for national wonder and returned it to a fixed flat number and so that after you had happiness under control you could self found an additional city at a time without interfering with national wonder construction. (At the moment all having a surplus in happiness means is that if you are a peaceful player your Golden Ages were now become more frequent and if you are a warmonger then its time to conquer an AI city or two.)

I don't think so. The requirements in all cities are just delaying expansion, not limiting it, which is enough annoying as it is I concede.

Now you could have mentioned the %science hit for each new city. But it was not my point, i could have added it in the title, just didn't bothered as I don't have expansions yet.

Anyways, the struggle is in vein : expansion IS limited, and for those like me who like expanding fast, early including, or who like to have the hands free whenever they are ready for an action (cannot go war when my units are superior because of unhappiness ? what a shame), it's purely unfun.

 

[Ryika]

Use a mod that disables happiness (or edit the game files to activate the hidden option to do so), play a few games... you'll see that mass-expansion without any limitations becomes really boring really fast - it's a nice variation from time to time but overall the game becomes a micromangement- and war-simulator. I spent quite some time playing (and enjoying) Civ with happiness disabled, but I wouldn't want that to be the main focus of every single match.

 

[Calouste]

I don't think so. The requirements in all cities are just delaying expansion, not limiting it, which is enough annoying as it is I concede.

Now you could have mentioned the %science hit for each new city. But it was not my point, i could have added it in the title, just didn't bothered as I don't have expansions yet.

Anyways, the struggle is in vein : expansion IS limited, and for those like me who like expanding fast, early including, or who like to have the hands free whenever they are ready for an action (cannot go war when my units are superior because of unhappiness ? what a shame), it's purely unfun.

The requirement to have the buildings in all cities delays city spam, not expansion. There are enough tools in BNW (internal trade routes, buying buildings, certain policies) to get new cities up to speed quickly.

 

[reddishrecue]

All these civilizations came out like that and their way of being really has changed throughout the years. .. the process is still the same but the idea has changed. ..

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

So you are saying that in Pandora the food basket is global ? Seems pretty good to me as you are not more penalysed by grabbing more land than staying with only one city.

Yea, in pandora each city have to pay the same cost to grow, the cost increase the more people your get however more people also mean more growth rate so the growth is pretty constant from start to finish.
Also pandora is very very nice compared to civ then you capture cities, basicly both pop and buildings survives.
Pandora is much more an action game, warfare from basicly turn 1 often only one survives.

I don't see it as a problem, and it is pretty realistic. In Civ5 you could as well say that the dominant strategy is to spam population and that's not fun because of it...

Its basicly impossible to make civilization close to feel like your ruling an historical empire, they weren't stable and did have alot of problems controling all their land not to say armies was alot more expansive then civilization make them look.

Civilization tries to be a game above all.
They try to not make ICS not the dominating strategy because they feel that is not what civilization is about.
So they added in corruption however that made some cities completly useless and still made the game a land grab rush so they changed to maintenace but that did only help to slow growth a little and the large empires still was so dominating that the startegy was still to get alot of cities, often very early and the end game was so strong when you only had to pay so little for so much, so they changed to global happines but they never thought about chaging other things like how the growth system work so they changed to ....

Basicly as long as settling new cities give large economical advantages for the cost of the settler they have to have some limiting system for expansion but if they make other things economical competive vs settlers then maybe then they could remove the penalaty.

 

[joncnunn]

I don't think so. The requirements in all cities are just delaying expansion, not limiting it, which is enough annoying as it is I concede.

Perhaps I should have also included that the placement of where National Wonders are in the tech tree turns a temporary delay for the completion of a national wonder into, wait there's another national wonder just around the corner and so I better wait some more ... rinse repeat this a few times and its now the Modern era; well a new size 1 city won't possibly benefit the empire by the end of the game now ...

Now you could have mentioned the %science hit for each new city. But it was not my point, i could have added it in the title, just didn't bothered as I don't have expansions yet.

This part is actually easy to manage; cash rush a library. City will now pay for itself in terms of science when it hits size 4 for any empire size within reason.
But if you want the new city to actually accelerate your science rate, then you need to cash rush the remaining science structures to catch up and for the city to reach a decent size.

Anyways, the struggle is in vein : expansion IS limited, and for those like me who like expanding fast, early including, or who like to have the hands free whenever they are ready for an action (cannot go war when my units are superior because of unhappiness ? what a shame), it's purely unfun.

Managing happiness while conquering is actually easier than self building the same number of cities. If you want a big empire via conquest; pick Tradition for Monarchy. The 50% reduction in pop population from the capital will drawf a mere 1 citizen per city that Liberty offers. Next you need religious sources of happiness (but it doesn't have to be a religion you founded; easier if you do found the religion so you can choose the proper follower beliefs instead of hoping the neighboring AI picks them correctly) Then remember to raze the sites that were bad and only keep the good cities. And build the happiness structures before you need them.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Yes there's a part of how i'm good at it (and there's a real learning curve here, the beginnings being frustrating), but I feel that even if you are good, you just can't rush expand or rush conquest, which i love to do. I like this feeling or conquering the land city after city, to see my civ growing to the point it touches other civs.

Other than that it's true that golbal happiness does not limit that much expansion, and it could be a reason to ask why it is here in the first place. Global happiness is a very, very, very frustrating botleneck especially for newcomers, while being nearly useless all in all. It just bothers beginners beyond sanity, they will have to learn how to delay their expansion and when to expand, which isn't automatically the funniest part of the game, isn't it ?

So i'm saying why all those limitations, in one hand they are frustrating enough for beginners (or even great fans of the series like me) and will prevent them from expand / conquer, in the other hand they are not that much a problem when you learn how to curve your expansion / conquests, so they are... useless ? Because let's face it, things are exactly how you say global happiness prevent them to be : it is to who will roll up the quickiest, especially when you consider AIs that have virtually unlimited happiness.

So I don't know why those limitations couldn't be totally removed, it would make things less sinuous and more direct and clear for beginners (more fun), while normal players could definitely concentrate on what's it's really all about. Civ5 is already how you describe what it shouldn't be, and from this point of view i must say than global happiness and city maintenance are far less efficient than corruption.

 

[Ryika]

Mass-Expanding without any limitations is NOT fun. I really don't know why you think everyone would enjoy if they had to mass-expand and start mass-warring once they hit another players borders... in every single game. There's a reason, why games moved away from that concept.

But if you enjoy that kind of gameplay, try some mods? Take Really Advanced Setup with "Disable Happiness" ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=126959669 ), use Aggressive and Expansive AI ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239794296 ) to make the AI keep up with your expansions, add Less Warmonger Hate ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=192953436 ) for less limitations... and there you go.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Mass-Expanding without any limitations is NOT fun.

? Yes it's fun, it's the purpose of all Civ games up to date. (at least 4 and 5) When you think about it, there's not much to do in those games appart from expanding / conquering...

And, actually, the true limitations are really tied up with AI difficulty level... and how AIs can overwhelm other AIs becoming huge powers or not.

I really don't know why you think everyone would enjoy if they had to mass-expand and start mass-warring once they hit another players borders... in every single game. There's a reason, why games moved away from that concept.

I never said such a thing. I think we should be able to do it without limitations. Actually i've proposed some ideas in the appropriate forum to allow either epxansion or turtling, depending exclusively on player's mood, but I don't want of a game that farorizes turtling, just because I don't think things are interesting enough in this way, but it's a matter of taste I guess.

But if you enjoy that kind of gameplay, try some mods? Take Really Advanced Setup with "Disable Happiness" ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=126959669 ), use Aggressive and Expansive AI ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239794296 ) to make the AI keep up with your expansions, add Less Warmonger Hate ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=192953436 ) for less limitations... and there you go.

Nice advice, thank you. Will probably follow this at the letter.