Run Away Civs and Large Civ Science Bonus

[BjoernLars]

I've been out of the loop of CiV for awhile for various reasons. This weekend I should be able to play it again. But before I jump back in, I had a few questions. Sorry if there is already a thread about this. I did a search but didn't find it.

Is there still an issue where it seemed that in almost every game one civilization starts to snowball and become all powerful since it was able to expand and/or conquer more than its neighbors?

Previous installments of Civ had science based off your economy and not raw population. So, in theory a city that spent lots of time and money to develop a strong economy and science output could be easily matched by three or four small cities with a quick library thrown in. From this idea, a large undeveloped empire could easily start outpacing smaller more developed empires in technology.

I was wondering if these issues had been and addressed and how.

Thanks,

Bjoern

EDIT: Restated Tech Advantage more clearly.

 

[Arilian]

Larger empires have more tech is unfair?

 

[guczy]

Unfair it is not, but sometimes it gets ridiculuous: in the current game i'm playing as Gengis Germany is nuking left and right while everyone else still runs around with crossbows.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The bigger problem is not pop->science, it is cities->science
all civs can get a large pop, even with one city

However, Great Scientists come from great scientist points... which are primarily based on how many Scientists you can run... ie how many Universities you have. So more cities->more universities->more Great Scientists.

More cities=/=more raw science (it tends to but not necessarily)

 

[BjoernLars]

I know that CIV is different from CiV. I'm just going off what I know.

In CIV, Science was based off the economy. With that, a civilization can't become a scientific powerhouse unless it develops its economy, dedicate a good chunk of that economy to science and the amplify that scientific output with various structures. From this, a civilization can strengthen its science but at some sort of cost of commerce, culture, happiness and military might.

From what I remember from the last time I played CiV, that since science is based off of population, raw size of the civilization seemed to have a great effect on technology. Absolutely people can then amplify that population with library, scientist, universities, etc..., but to me, this system just seems that the bigger you are, everything will be better for you.

To me, 100 yokels (apologies to the yokel segment of CiV fans) vs. 5 scientist: I think the scientist will be making the next technological breakthrough, not the plethora of yokels.

 

[CivOasis]

It is mostly based off pop., but well developed cities generate more than others because of the percentage based bonus.
The problem is that humans players can expoit this (I once pulled off a massive city in the amazon on an earth map- I didn't let workers near it, so, once I built a university, it was a major science producer.)
Basically, I am always that runaway civ. 20+ techs ahead of AI, flying bombers in the 1500's? (on marathon)
Even if I have 30 cities, and an AI has 80. No kidding.
The real trade-off is science vs. social policies, though.

 

[cryptc]

I find the runaway civilizations are one of the major flaws in Civ, since either it removes any challenge for me, or makes me face an opponent so much more advanced than me that I need to just hope to sneak myself a culture victory under the radar.

What I'm toying with on my games is slowing down tech alot (not just setting different "speed" on the game, since marathon doesn't really play differently than standard, just gives a little more time to move units around, so that Columbus doesn't come back from discovering america to see spain have nukes when he returns )

Anyways, since I also like older techs more than modern warfare, I'm toying with exponential cost increase in tech... so first era has x2, second x4, third x8, x16 and so on... This has the benefit that if a civ gets out tech'ed, it won't be too silly... You might have trebuchet when your opponent still don't have better ranged than archers and trireme's, but you're unlikely to manage to get to cannon before they atleast catch up alittle.

Also generally removes that some periods (Classical) I basicly skip over, so that I can actually enjoy each period.

To have this work, you also need to increase price of research agreements alot though, otherwise AI's will just mostly tech by those instead.

 

[CivOasis]

Try the More Units mod. I use that on marathon, doesn't help with runaway civs, but allows for more units (kind of obvious) and buildings. According to the info, about 4X faster on marathon, but without adding production. It means crappy early-game economies, though.

 

[cryptc]

Could you link that? I couldn't find it in modpack or modcomponent downloads, and the name of it isn't well designed for a forum based search either (got lots of hits, nothing about the mod)

 

[CivOasis]

Its not in the forum, just on the ingame browser. Heads up, though, I think it really cripples the AI economy. I suspect they put to high a priority on units, so it affects their science output.

 

[cryptc]

Aah, either that ingame thing didn't exist last I installed a mod (ages ago), or I just never knew hehe nifty feature, and I'll give the mod a try

 

[JaGarLo]

The ''run-away'' problem is due to the insane happiness bonus the AI got.

With additional :

- More population
- More cities
- More GA's
- More $ and production gained by GA
- More units/buildings

And yes, more science. You have a military advantage when you're more advanced than everyone.

 

[crossmr]

Yes and no.
In my current game I was shocked to find an AI civ keeping pace with me. I was playing Korea and trying to min max it in certain times (when you build a settler you can run a food deficit, so I dumped them into unemployed specialists for +2 science bonuses each), so for about 12 turns I had around +6-+8 science/turn very early game
grabbed the great library for a couple free techs, got 2 great scientists early and plopped them down for science bonuses, and seemed to be teching quickly. Faster than I had in my last game.
Until the report popped up and it listed an "unmet" player with the same number of tech as me.
and then some turns later I noted that an unmet player had moved to the next era, well ahead of me.

I don't know who it is yet, but I'm a little surprised. On prince level, the renaissance era is when I tend to pull away tech wise, but whoever this guy is is making a good show of it.
I'm about to plop a university though, and I've got the porcelain tower a couple turns away, so I should make up ground.