Yeah there is just essentially no way a 4-5 city empire can compete with an 8-10 city empire in the current build of the game. The growth scaler for Tradition is just so small and the unhappiness policy and the building production policy for Progress are just so strong.
Is Tall Tradition "Too Brittle" - an analysis
- Thread starter Stalker0
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compete in what way? Militarily no completely agree.
Science, culture, happiness? Absolutely, Tall is very competitive in these areas.
usadefcon1
Prince
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I had an idea of making the "defensive" wonders like Himeji Castle to be Tradition exclusive. I might try it out next play though.
hmm swap out university of sankore for himeji....an interesting idea.
But that is exactly the problem--brittleness. If you can survive, Tall's science and culture is really very strong, its just much more difficult to actually survive to the late game. While obviously I want tradition play to be quite different from progress play, I do think that making tradition policies have stronger affects in the early game and less powerful scaling would make the tree and tradition as a whole much more compelling. Here are some example changes I've been toying with:
- For Justice: change "cities with a garrison gain +25% ranged combat strength" to "cities have +50% ranged combat strength." +25% RCS is pretty measly, and having it dependent on garrisons only punishes you more for tradition's lack of supply.
- For Splendor: change "expending a great person grants 50 culture, scaling with era" to "expending a great person grants 150 culture." Remove the era scaling but increase the culture to give Tradition a better policy lead early on, but less culture in the late game.
- For Majesty: Palace Garden no longer gives +25% GP rate. Instead, add "gain 50 points towards every type of great person in your capital." This gives you a leg up on GP generation in the early game but doesn't allow you to spam quite as many in the late game.
- For Ceremony: completely change the policy from "+1 happiness from and +25% production towards National Wonders with building requirements," to "-1 unhappiness from urbanization in every city" and "when you construct a National Wonder, every city gains an instant production boost equal to 10% of the National Wonder's cost." This both allows you to more easily work specialists in satellite cities and thus make use of the extra growth from the Opener and Scaler, but also buffs your satellite cities by giving them a couple hundred extra total production in the first few eras.
- For the Scaler: change "+3% growth in every city and +1 science in the capital" to "+1 food in every city and +1 science in the capital." Again, this change would try to make Tradition stronger in the early game but weaker in the late game. Assuming no food modifiers, +1 food in every city is stronger than +3% growth up until a city has 34 excess food.
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Why not attacking?
Because at that point authority is just going to be better.
And there is nothing stopping tradition form conquering too, it might be worse than progress at 9 cities but it should still be easily enough to win the game after taking out 1-2 players.
Why was Mongolia so dominant for you?I would say the same as you but more vehemently: Venice is reaaally different than tall traditionlike, more supply cap on the long term than tall trad (you get more colonias than tradition can afford to settle or conquer), so little happiness issues that venice puppets might be better cities than my crappy tradition expos, so much money that building an army does not slow your infrastructure or wonders. The only drawback compared to regular tradition is founding a religion if god of commerce is unavailable. I would have expected science to be a disadvantage for venice but it really isn't given how bad normal tradition expos tend to be.
Reading back the overall thread, I also feel the lack of agency of tall, turtling play is often considered by many players as both 1) unavoidable and 2) well deserved. Hence the sense of "given" victory mentioned by the OP. I would say that 1) on the technical side, this lack of agency is not unavoidable, it really depends on the diplo AI formulation and its willingness to team up against a runaway civ. And about 2) the legitimacy of a turtling playstyle, I think playing the underdog, purposedly avoid the spotlight, not grabbing that extra wonder, always being the second threat, pulling strings and building a coalition against a runaway is just as interesting and rewarding as... simply being the runaway, winning a domination game by the industrial era with absolutely no care about public opinion (mongolia just took away all my awe about deity difficulty, I had to check again the settings to be sure). The summarize, skill in this game should not be measured in APM
myclan
King
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Tall is good at culture, because we have limited amount of Writer/Artist/Musician Guilds, but it fades when village can provide +2 culture and zoo can provide +1 culture for forest/zoo, when Wide has more cities.
And wide is certainly better then tall in science, just because I can have more scientists for more cities.
The only optimal play is both tall AND wide, not just one aspect.
Yes, the best way for tradition to win is to conquer 1~2 AI for more cities. But with few cities and few production now tradition has, except you have a good map with lots of resoures/hills, it's just difficult to build a strong enough army.
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Each additional city increases the cost by 5%.
Usually the city processes 2-3 villages. This is 4-6 culture per turn. If we assume that a new policy is unlocked every 20 turns, then the city will receive 80-120 culture from the villages. I didn’t pay attention to how many %% culture multipliers you can get from different sources (Wonders of the World, Golden Age, amphitheatres), but let it be 200-300%. In 20 turns you will then get 160-360 culture.
160 = 5% of 3200
360 = 5% of 7200.
As soon as policy or tenet starts to cost more than 7200 (or 3200), then 3 villages for a new city of a wide empire no longer compensate for the increase in cost. In addition, a wider empire needs to maintain more roads and workers.
At the same time, Tradition has a Great Artist slot, which is available very early.
The number of caravans does not depend on the number of cities. When playing with a small number of cities, there will always be free caravans that can be sent to other empires or allied city-states and receive additional culture and science. Alliances with military CSs are very beneficial - free units, science. You can avoid producing units at all if you are friends with 2-3 CSs.
In addition, caravans are a significant factor in international relations and give a positive opinion, reducing the likelihood of war. Tradition doesn’t really want to wage aggressive wars.
In vanilla it is very easy to bribe the AI to fight proxy wars. This makes it much easier to play with 3-4 cities if you regularly pit aggressive neighbors against each other. This is not possible in VP. But you can regularly declare war yourself and fight so that there is a truce with one of your neighbors when you are at war with another neighbor. Change opponent every 10-15 turns. Then there will be no situation where two empires simultaneously declare war on you. There will be many generals, many Citadels. You can place 3 forts around each Citadel, if you place the Citadels through 2 tiles so that their auras cover the maximum area.
If you see that someone else’s general is running around your borders, declare war so that he cannot set up a Citadel and seize part of your territory.
You can simply burn other empire's cities. Over time, the borders will expand so much that the AI will not be able to place a new city nearby.
The advantage of wide empires with a higher unit limit comes from the Lighthouse (+1 flat supply) and Seaport (+2 flat supply). Each coastal city is potentially capable of supporting 3 more units than a land city. Plus bonuses from the population. Sea caravans bring more food than land caravans before the advent of the Train station. There are often 2-3 fish, which further enhances the growth of cities.
There is no doubt that coastal cities need ships, but it is possible to reduce the strength of seaports to +1.
Or it is necessary to somehow divide the supply separately for ground and separately for naval units. Because by building 3 seaports we are not required to produce 6 ships, we can produce 6 infantry and gain a ground advantage against an empire with 1 seaport.
In addition, the price of generals does not depend on the price of admirals. Getting 2 generals will cost 200 + 400 = 600 points. Two admirals also cost 200 + 400 = 600. A total of 1200 points for 4 military leaders, when used, the unit limit will be increased by 4.
But 4 generals cost 200 + 400 + 600 + 800 = 2000.
It turns out that with the active use of military leaders to increase the limit of units, it is more profitable to fight both on land and on water.
Although I don’t activate admirals and they float with the ships.
There is no doubt that coastal cities need ships, but it is possible to reduce the strength of seaports to +1.
Or it is necessary to somehow divide the supply separately for ground and separately for naval units. Because by building 3 seaports we are not required to produce 6 ships, we can produce 6 infantry and gain a ground advantage against an empire with 1 seaport.
In addition, the price of generals does not depend on the price of admirals. Getting 2 generals will cost 200 + 400 = 600 points. Two admirals also cost 200 + 400 = 600. A total of 1200 points for 4 military leaders, when used, the unit limit will be increased by 4.
But 4 generals cost 200 + 400 + 600 + 800 = 2000.
It turns out that with the active use of military leaders to increase the limit of units, it is more profitable to fight both on land and on water.
Although I don’t activate admirals and they float with the ships.
Phosphoraptor
Prince
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I think tall being brittle is not so much a problem as it is inherent to CIV in general. Yields and resources are tied to the land, and the best way to get stronger is to take developed land from others. Even in vanilla with its 4 city tradition meta you get much stronger once you get frigates/artillery and start conquering. Besides, the game is designed like a wargame where the meat is moving units around a map and fighting. Making good use of warring should be important for any playstyle.
Tall tradition as a starting strategy should be viable, but generally conquering weak civs to grow stronger should be incentivised. So I think the way to balance tall tradition is to give it a window of high military power before wide catches up and letting it conquer/settle colonies to transition to late game. The main task of tall will be to secure its early game core with these conquests.
Tall tradition as a starting strategy should be viable, but generally conquering weak civs to grow stronger should be incentivised. So I think the way to balance tall tradition is to give it a window of high military power before wide catches up and letting it conquer/settle colonies to transition to late game. The main task of tall will be to secure its early game core with these conquests.
In VP, the AI expands very actively early and there is almost no unexploited land after turn 200. The only free islands are 1-2 tiles in the middle of the ocean. In vanilla, I remember I could found new cities when uranium was discovered near the pole.
This, by the way, is one of the factors that the AI has huge armies - they simply have too many cities with large populations for the Middle Ages. Too much food from the landscape, towns, bonuses from manufactories, triangle of farms and caravans. But in those days, any epidemic mowed down several countries at the same time. Even any open injury could easily lead to infection and death due to the lack of antibiotics.
It is possible to further reduce the initial bonuses of policy trees so that the founding of new cities is not an easy decision due to the decrease in imperial happiness (in vanilla this required a guaranteed +1 luxury resource) and shifted in time to the moments of the discovery of technologies with new resources - horses, iron, coal , aluminum, oil, uranium.
I'm playing an outdated version and don't know how fast borders are growing now and how much culture cities can produce - but the speed of border growth is also a significant factor. The faster the borders grow, the fewer cities can be founded in disputed territories.
myclan
King
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Just look at my last progress game, I built 10 cities from Thebes to Abydos, all the wonders are in Thebes so very high culture output. Every new cities +5% for policy cost. So my 10th cities will make policies 1.45× VS 1.4×, that is 3.57% more costing. But my 10th city provide 69, 4.16% of total empire culture.
Yes, everyone want to have more cities to win easily, either by self built(Progress) or conquer(Authority), but for some unlucky start, we should give them a chance to build few cities but get more later, that is tradition.
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Phosphoraptor
Prince
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This is probably an old version or vanilla mapscript thing. When playing this version on communitu mapscript I keep having a small continent without any civs even after getting astronomy. Instead of 1-2 tile islands I often see island chains or 3-5 tiles together.
Thibix Magnus
Warlord
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honestly it was maybe a bad example, I rolled an oval map with a start surrounded by city states, which is maybe equivalent to 2 diffculty levels lover, the first round of tributes launched the snowball and I'm not even experienced in domination victory. I feel I could have won tradition 3 cities in deity with mongolia. Anyway, I still feel successful warmongering gives too much science, it should allow you to keep up, not overcome. There is also the difficulty issue, where the more enemy units the better for the yields on kill. As for the AI, authority AIs tend to fall off, but when they do work they are the most unstoppable snowballing foe.
this is a big factor. I love to play the communitu map for aesthetics but it really favors progress, as coastlines are more elaborate thus expansions are easier to defend with more chokepoints. I should try playing a smaller map with same number of players. But in the end, that should be they key element of picking tradition: great start, little room.
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More generally on the thread:
again, I don't agree with "you have to be wide at some point, but you can choose how you get there". Like, it's probably the current state in deity (though I have won pure Tall too without a single conquest), but for the sake of diversity it shouldn't be a design decision. It's perfectly fine in terms of design to reward tall, it's a way to grow as legitimate as others, what you don't invest in expansion you do invest in other ways. I've posted in this thread how it has the potential to be fun, engaging gameplay, oposite to what we imagine about turtling. A lot of playstyle balancing comes down to the diplomatic AI. For me the funniest way to play a small army is to manage the great powers. Get support from other players when attacked, not out of charity but because they don't want your wonders to fall in the hands of their rivals. Delay your big push for victory until you think you can hold an all out assault just long enough to win. I hope to provide more detailed input if I find the time to understand the AI code.
In a related way, tradition providing a stronger start but falling off later is elegant and fun in terms of immersion with policy title, but I don't think it works in terms of design. Wide empires have all the means to take down tall ones by definition, if you remove late game scaling from tall (and there is already very little) there is no point in that gameplay. Or at least it shoehorns you into leveraging one timing conquest by medieval (and science is key for timing attacks, which tradition is not particularly strong at).
Hapiness:
As others have said, happiness is a big issue too, which means satelites are hard to grow, and are thus a 5% burden on your science and culture (S/C) for a long time. I don't know if Tradition needs a hapiness scaler with the capital population, or if progress hapiness needs a nerf, but managing hapiness should be a headache for large empires not small ones. Or maybe tradition needs to get back to the old "no S/C penalty until 3 cities, 7% above". I think there is also a design conflict where some want Tradition to be the Tall gameplay, while others want more flexibility with Tradition being the Capital gameplay but not necessarily smaller empire. There is another conflict in the definition of Tall: big capital and crappy expos, or (like in vanilla) big 3/4 core cities?
Medieval trees:
Tradition power is closely tied to its available follow-up. The Great Unstacking of artistry was good in terms of opening up options, as it is now an interesting tree for progress and authority. However it nerfed pure tall play, which is one step forward one step back in terms of gameplay diversity. More generally, I wonder if all the nerfs to CV were correctly targetted. Was Tall CV the issue before, or just that CV was too accessible on your way to SV or DV? The nerfs to CV may have balanced victory types in terms of aggregate results, but I'm not sure they have addressed that issue of balancing accidental CV vs intentional CV. As for other trees, I'm not sure how they work with tradition but both of them imply widening the empire I guess, they are not for pure Tall.
The weakness of this example though is it doesn't look at how a city builds up. Yes once a new colony is fully up to speed with all of the infrastructure it can contribute, but that takes a LONG time, and meanwhile that penalty is costing you culture all along the way. Also the more cities you have the less gold you have to spread around for infrastructure (while gold scales with cities I have consistently found it doesn't scale enough to constantly invest in all cities). That means the more cities you have, the slower it takes to get all the infrastructure to "tip top shape".
I did an analysis a while back with pioneers and colonists, and you can see how long it takes to pay off the various yields for a new city (or if it actually does at all).
Pioneer Expansion Profitable? - A Real Example
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Nano_Magnus
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2023
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- 11
Hi, it would be good for tall players to add on tradition the posibility to get more spies, in order to use it as diplomats or try to rig elections on CS or steal anything valuable from distant civs
Also for troops experience it could be great if when completing tradition you could get always experience from barbarians or at least enough to get lvl 6 XP
It would be nice if there is a way to expand our frontiers faster, because with out enough generals its troublesome to had our cities to close to the gray zones when we are going to be fighting to defend our land
Im a tall player, I always play with 4 -5 cities, beacuse I play only some turns every day and with no time to check everithing on a big empire.
Also for troops experience it could be great if when completing tradition you could get always experience from barbarians or at least enough to get lvl 6 XP
It would be nice if there is a way to expand our frontiers faster, because with out enough generals its troublesome to had our cities to close to the gray zones when we are going to be fighting to defend our land
Im a tall player, I always play with 4 -5 cities, beacuse I play only some turns every day and with no time to check everithing on a big empire.
You should be careful in your wishes - sometimes they come true.
If the spy is caught in the act of stealing, the affected empire will have a worse opinion of you and may declare war. It is advisable to have several defensive pacts if you plan to steal from a strong empire.
In fact, the later the borders of your empire come into contact with the borders of an aggressive neighbor, such as Zulu or Japan, the easier it will be for you. It is better for the contact to occur in the late game, when their unique units become obsolete and die out on the battlefield.
Believe me, meeting a crowd of samurai or impi during their heyday and mass production can end very sadly.
French Musketeers allow France to fall behind by 9-10 technologies, but nevertheless be a very annoying hindrance until you have Foreign Legions and Fusilers.
