Is Tall Tradition "Too Brittle" - an analysis

[Stalker0]

Once again the debate of wide vs tall rages on in discord. The talk on the usual suspects, yields and happiness primarily. However, if there was a case for Tall tradition to be "underpowered" I think its more fundamental than that....

Does Tall Tradition "win" a game, or are they "given a win"? This is a point about the brittle nature of Tall Tradition.

So first off, when I say Tall Tradition, I am referring to your classic 4-6 city Tradition play, where you stay on this city number for the whole of the game. This opposed to someone who starts tall, but eventually switches into military and conquers wide. While this play has a number of advantages, its key weakness is force projection. Your supply limit is small, often small enough that protecting your borders is a real exercise in strategic thinking, never mind actually going out and beating up someone. Because of that, a Tall players has very little hard influence on the rest of the board, and so it could be argued, if AI opponents "play the game correctly", the Tall player shouldn't win. Lets examine that.

Diplomatic Victory
At the end of the day, you need CS allies to win a DV....though with statecraft, freedom, and holy land, you can get a number of "Free votes" all on your own. However, you stil need some CS. If a warring player systematically takes out your CS....you really cannot defend them with this play. And so I would argue that DV is NOT a viable tall win condition if the AI "plays correctly".

Domination Victory
the antithesis of what your strategy, so not in the cards.

Cultural Victory
The default victory for a Tall player in many cases. The question is, if the world turns against you, votes down culture proposals, goes against your ideology, wars with you a lot, and maybe there is another strong culture player out there....is this victory still viable? Historically one way to force a cv was to beat up the highest culture player to knock them down, but again that is very difficult with this style of play. And so I wonder again, is CV truly viable if the AI makes it challenging, and is only a VC you can be "given"?

Science Victory
Tall players tend to have great science and are often well poised for a SV....if they can make it that far. This normally means the other VCs haven't happened yet.

DomV - You can guard your capital and prevent this from happeing.
CV - you are often a very strong culture contender with this style, so normally another CVer would need to beat you up to overtake you in influence, and again you should be able to stop that.
DV - this one is tricky, if a wide player ramps up diplo unit production in the late game, a Tall player really can't match that. The best you can do is soak up as many embassies and free votes as possible to prevent an enemy DV, but I would argue if a wide player "goes to work" on securing a DV, I think a Tall player can slow them down, but stopping them is a real challenge.

Survival - One of the last real challenges of the SV is mere survival. When your dealing with modern armies and aircraft (not to mention nukes), the brick defenses tall is often known for don't help. If a player decides to flood your civ with xcoms, nuke you, send waves of zeroes, and a full army (maybe navy) at your door step, can a tall player truly hold out? Often you have the science advantage which is a big help, but I would argue that if a AI "gets serious" about a late game war with you, I don't know if holding out long enough for an SV is truly viable or not.

 

[rkkn]

I do indeed think it's too brittle. you just build up and do your thing, and hope that no one else wins before you or stops you

 

[andersw]

In current version I feel Trad AI get trounced by Authority AIs.
Waiting in anticipation for the AI vs AI reports.

 

[ma_kuh]

What kinds of decisions is this type of play encouraging as the game progresses? Early on, you're planning out a defensive ring of cities, so that's pretty interesting. Maybe you're deciding if all 3 guilds should go in 3 cities, or if you want to split them up a bit.

But once you set up your cities and guilds, you're just playing defense and trying to race, it doesn't really seem like engaging with the rest of the game. Unless I'm missing something? If that's the plan, I'm not sure I really care to make this kind of play is "strong", if this was a competitive strategy it sounds kind of degenerate.

Having reasons for second or third expansion waves seems good, it doesn't need to be ICS. I think the settled-puppets idea is worth (re)considering to let Tall Tradition play more islands/garrison cities that don't slow down its primary race, i.e. tourism and/or science.

 

[Amask]

I was quite disappointed that the settled puppets proposal didn't win.

 

[rkkn]

ICS

what's ICS?

 

[Enginseer]

what's ICS?

infinite city sprawl

 

[azum4roll]

Survival - One of the last real challenges of the SV is mere survival. When your dealing with modern armies and aircraft (not to mention nukes), the brick defenses tall is often known for don't help. If a player decides to flood your civ with xcoms, nuke you, send waves of zeroes, and a full army (maybe navy) at your door step, can a tall player truly hold out? Often you have the science advantage which is a big help, but I would argue that if a AI "gets serious" about a late game war with you, I don't know if holding out long enough for an SV is truly viable or not.

You definitely can't hold your own in this case. But you're supposed to have the tech lead (if you're trying for SV).

In current version I feel Trad AI get trounced by Authority AIs.
Waiting in anticipation for the AI vs AI reports.

The results so far is 90% Time Victory... somehow?

 

[rkkn]

The results so far is 90% Time Victory... somehow?

there are some preliminary results?

 

[CppMaster]

Because of that, a Tall players has very little hard influence on the rest of the board, and so it could be argued, if AI opponents "play the game correctly", the Tall player shouldn't win.

It would mean that Tall play is generally underpowered, no?

 

[Zuizgond]

Seems normal to me that if you want to have only a few cities and a strong focus on growth and great person generation, you'll have a hard time against enemies.

 

[stii]

Pure tall player where you try and win without every attacking being weak seems fine? It will be really hard to balance both sides so they are exactly equal. It is certainly possible to win without war, just harder.

 

[pineappledan]

The OP's question is "is playing a brittle strategy too brittle?", and the conclusion that OP comes to is that "yes, the brittle strategy is brittle".

Okay, but is it Too brittle? That doesn't seem to have been cleared up at all.

 

[Stalker0]

Okay, but is it Too brittle? That doesn't seem to have been cleared up at all.

A fair point, and I wanted some others take on it.

Probably the real question is, what is the point of no return? So if we recognize that going 6 city Tall is just not viable in some circumstances, how late can the Tall player go before they have to recognize that, and then pivot into something else? Perhaps Tradition -> Imperalism or Tradition -> Autocracy and add war back on to the menu. What is required in order to do that?

I think the main issue with the pivot is on the naval side. Ground wise, as Tradition I still want to have a solid army, and its often more modernized then your neighbors due to your tech power, and so forcing your way into your neighbor to pick up some puppets or even a vassal is not out of the question. Navy on the other hand is trickier, which is often required on a water heavy map if the key player is on a different continent. You can't play navy small, a navy has to be large to be a credible threat, and so Tradition just doesn't have the supply normally to make that shift.

So what can they do?

One of the last big shifts I think is the beeline to military strategy. Picking up Brandenburg gives an extra 10 supply, which could easily be like a 30% bump to a tradition player. That can be the start of pushing a bigger army or even finally getting a credible navy together....though production will remain a concern. United Front if you move into Autocracy can give a decent boost to supply from unit pop (though unit pop always is a mystery to me, huge bonuses to this never seem to translate to big supply increases). It also lets you get more units out of military CS, which could be a way to buff up your production numbers. You could try to stay freedom and use draft registration to buff up your numbers, but freedom has really nothing for supply issues, so that's a question mark.

So I would argue you really need to assess if tradition is going to work by early Industrial, maybe even late Renaissance, to give a enough time to pivot into a more war-focused civ that can project the power you need.

 

[stii]

I don't think it will ever be impossible, you are just making it harder on yourself by doing something less than optimal.

 

[Hinin]

A fair point, and I wanted some others take on it.

Probably the real question is, what is the point of no return? So if we recognize that going 6 city Tall is just not viable in some circumstances, how late can the Tall player go before they have to recognize that, and then pivot into something else? Perhaps Tradition -> Imperalism or Tradition -> Autocracy and add war back on to the menu. What is required in order to do that?

I think the main issue with the pivot is on the naval side. Ground wise, as Tradition I still want to have a solid army, and its often more modernized then your neighbors due to your tech power, and so forcing your way into your neighbor to pick up some puppets or even a vassal is not out of the question. Navy on the other hand is trickier, which is often required on a water heavy map if the key player is on a different continent. You can't play navy small, a navy has to be large to be a credible threat, and so Tradition just doesn't have the supply normally to make that shift.

So what can they do?

One of the last big shifts I think is the beeline to military strategy. Picking up Brandenburg gives an extra 10 supply, which could easily be like a 30% bump to a tradition player. That can be the start of pushing a bigger army or even finally getting a credible navy together....though production will remain a concern. United Front if you move into Autocracy can give a decent boost to supply from unit pop (though unit pop always is a mystery to me, huge bonuses to this never seem to translate to big supply increases). It also lets you get more units out of military CS, which could be a way to buff up your production numbers. You could try to stay freedom and use draft registration to buff up your numbers, but freedom has really nothing for supply issues, so that's a question mark.

So I would argue you really need to assess if tradition is going to work by early Industrial, maybe even late Renaissance, to give a enough time to pivot into a more war-focused civ that can project the power you need.

One idea balparmak had was to separate naval supply from the rest : in his system, it depended only on a specific, untradable strategic resource that would be given by specific buildings (named Sailors in his modmods). With this system, there was the possibility to have a tall civ with low supply but still able to have a decent navy, thus making Tradition far less brittle on that front. The problem was that the system made wide armies better too, so it was combined with a overall percentage decrease of supply (that needed to be refined, but the basic concept was sound imo).

If we can find the good equilibrium point with this system where you have sufficient naval forces to defend a tall empire with low supply while not forcing an excessive decrease in supply for wide empires to compensate, it could prove interesting.

 

[ma_kuh]

I wonder if you can attach +supply to tile improvements as well? Or maybe to a building which counts tiles.

Like Barracks (or some descendent) gains "+1 [non-naval] unit supply from Forts in this city". So you'd tone down the population-based supply across the board, and then Tall empires with excess land can fill some space with Forts to boost supply and build a perimeter.

 

[Stalker0]

I wonder if you can attach +supply to tile improvements as well? Or maybe to a building which counts tiles.

Like Barracks (or some descendent) gains "+1 [non-naval] unit supply from Forts in this city". So you'd tone down the population-based supply across the board, and then Tall empires with excess land can fill some space with Forts to boost supply and build a perimeter.

The idea of a fort giving supply is interesting, probably more than 3 border growth

That said, its likely abusable. You find some crap backyard land fill it with forts, and suddenly supply doesn't matter. If the fort has to be worked, well then supply becomes weird and finnicky as workers move in or out of forts.

 

[ma_kuh]

My first thought is:
Okay, so "+1 unit supply from Forts in this city, up to the population of the city" ... but then you're kind of back to scaling with population. Maybe "capped by era"? It's kind of weird, but basically you'd have +1 in classical with one fort, +2 in medieval with two, etc. from this hypothetical building. And maybe it only comes online later, so some of the scaling has already happened.

 

[Anarcomu]

Maybe adding a heavy pop scaler (20-30%) to either the palace or one building from the tradition tree ?
Tradition player have a higher pop count in the capital anyway, so palace could be fine.