The "cities tech cost" and it's implications

[bcaiko]

Science is harder in a large empire because there is more bureaucracy above you, more layer of rules to wade through before you publish... on the other hand, in a small empire, you can always move one city over and publish your ideas there.
And any new technology discovery must be standardized across the empire to truly be useful... that 5% extra tech cost is going into biologists doing environmental action reports and engineers devising manufacturing standards for each of the 50 states.

Not to mention in order to educate the citizens on how to use the technology (or just the people who need it) over a wide-spread area is going to take more resources. Your teachers/scientists/whatever are going to be less concentrated, costing you some science capacity. That's the way I see this penalty, flavor wise.

 

[Evanescence]

Europa Universalis anyone?

I often feel that CiV could borrow some stuff from EU series.

 

[andrewlt]

Science is harder in a large empire because there is more bureaucracy above you, more layer of rules to wade through before you publish... on the other hand, in a small empire, you can always move one city over and publish your ideas there.
And any new technology discovery must be standardized across the empire to truly be useful... that 5% extra tech cost is going into biologists doing environmental action reports and engineers devising manufacturing standards for each of the 50 states.

If we're going by real world arguments, this is not true at all. There's a reason why places like Silicon Valley exist. There is a multiplicative bonus to having a large number of scientists, engineers, designers and other highly educated people in the same area. Even going back to the classical age, numerous highly educated people moving to the same city is not unheard of. Note that plenty of people working in Silicon Valley come from all over the country and even from all over the world. A small empire simply does not have the population required to achieve critical mass.

Many of the greatest scientists and inventors in history like Einstein, Newton, Edison and Bell copied whole swaths of their theories from other people and/or had their students do a lot of the heavy lifting in their work. Part of their greatness is because they forgot to credit other people's contribution and their shenanigans is mostly lost to history.

There's also the issue of economies of scale and scope. A smaller empire may not have the population to make switching to the new technology be profitable to the companies that developed them. Plenty of technologies can be slowly rolled out city by city. Then there's the financing, which highly benefits from economies of scale as well.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

If we're going by real world arguments, this is not true at all. There's a reason why places like Silicon Valley exist. There is a multiplicative bonus to having a large number of scientists, engineers, designers and other highly educated people in the same area. Even going back to the classical age, numerous highly educated people moving to the same city is not unheard of. Note that plenty of people working in Silicon Valley come from all over the country and even from all over the world. A small empire simply does not have the population required to achieve critical mass.

Many of the greatest scientists and inventors in history like Einstein, Newton, Edison and Bell copied whole swaths of their theories from other people and/or had their students do a lot of the heavy lifting in their work. Part of their greatness is because they forgot to credit other people's contribution and their shenanigans is mostly lost to history.

There's also the issue of economies of scale and scope. A smaller empire may not have the population to make switching to the new technology be profitable to the companies that developed them. Plenty of technologies can be slowly rolled out city by city. Then there's the financing, which highly benefits from economies of scale as well.

multiplicative bonus for people in Same area= 1 high pop city with a lot of research buildings..they attract smart people from other countries (Silicon Valley includes immigrants)

Multiple cities=all your smart people spread out over multiple areas... harder to get them to communicate on researching and implementing a tech.

Benefit from other civs work=Research agreements

and "small empires" in civ are like ..all western european countries... they are only like 1-3 cities in civ.

Recipie for fast progress=multiple different small civs in an area with research agreements




PS... BIG NEWS Science penalty Applies to Puppets...

So basically assuming all your cities are the same
# cities:tech rate
1:1
2:1.9
3:2.7
4:3.5
5:4.2
6:4.8
7:5.4
8:5.9

10:6.9

12:7.7

15:8.8

20:10.2

40:13.5

100:16.8

infinite:20

 

[andrewlt]

Sounds like the more mathematically inclined can easily make a formula on the ideal amount of cities. It functions like a soft cap on cities.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Sounds like the more mathematically inclined can easily make a formula on the ideal amount of cities. It functions like a soft cap on cities.

It largely depends on what trade offs there are for each additional city (land, happiness, how good the city is, etc.)

but if you had infinite happiness and infintie land, and were only concerned about science...
and every city was identical Except your capital

ie normal city gives 1 cities worth of science
Capital gives "C" cities worth

For N extra cities your tech output is

(C+N) /(20+N)

So as long as your capital is less than 20x as good as a standard city, more cities= better science. (even if only slightly..reaching an asymtote)
but if your capital is more than 20x as good as a standard city...then you only want your capital.


Side note, this makes annexing look much better, a puppet that is sitting there ineffectively prducing some trickle of gold is inferior to a annexed city... Except for social policies (since you can't specialize for culture production much)

 

[crazyundead]

Your people are unhappy because Their fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers are dying while suppressing some ungrateful rebels in a place far from home, and their taxes are going to buy off some corrupt puppet leader in another city.

Science is harder in a large empire because there is more bureaucracy above you, more layer of rules to wade through before you publish... on the other hand, in a small empire, you can always move one city over and publish your ideas there.
And any new technology discovery must be standardized across the empire to truly be useful... that 5% extra tech cost is going into biologists doing environmental action reports and engineers devising manufacturing standards for each of the 50 states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending
http://api.ning.com/files/HfvPkwzay...iMAyGT2MZQXmZyOMdR5YWmPnvoRyKGZHCQx/Top20.png

In reality populous AND large nations have the most science output

i.e. science from Hiawatha's 30 20 pop cities >>>>> Korea's 3 40 pop cities

 

[SamBC]

R&D spending doesn't actually mean the same as scientific output.

 

[marioflag]

Is there anything in the interface explaining the total science penalty for the number of cities or is it hidden?

 

[crazyundead]

R&D spending doesn't actually mean the same as scientific output.

my second link is # of publications per country, check that out

 

[pilot00]

R&D spending doesn't actually mean the same as scientific output.

Really? I suppose that the super collider was made of duct tape found on the houses of the staff?

Though to be honest I get what you try to say. It might not ALWAYS mean scientific output because the project will reach a standstill or be scrapped. Even so, the fact that money were spend proved something: That said theory/design whatever was wrong and thus progress was made. Not to count what side scientific avenues might accidentally be discovered by such failures.

 

[Polisurgist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending
http://api.ning.com/files/HfvPkwzay...iMAyGT2MZQXmZyOMdR5YWmPnvoRyKGZHCQx/Top20.png

In reality populous AND large nations have the most science output

i.e. science from Hiawatha's 30 20 pop cities >>>>> Korea's 3 40 pop cities

Additional cities are still almost always going to net you more science, you'll just have diminishing returns on it. Your tenth city will still increase your tech rate, it just won't increase it by as much as your third city did.

Which manages to be both good for gameplay and fairly realistic.

 

[Scott Jegg]

Is there anything in the interface explaining the total science penalty for the number of cities or is it hidden?

It would be good to actually see hard figures for this, but if it's anything like culture in G&K then I'd imagine it's just the cost per tech that gets increased.

 

[Big J Money]

Honestly, 5% is such a small penalty, it's really hard for a newly placed city to not be justifiable until very late in the game when you're producing a really high beaker #.

Of course, just like the culture penalty, this penalty can start to become a science tax retroactively, which is hard to predict without experience.

For example, once I'm generating 1000 bpt, any city I own that's not producing at least 50 science is a burden. Possibly one that was lucrative a long time ago is no longer worth it. But hey, if it was worth it back then at least you got a temporary benefit from it.

 

[Polisurgist]

Honestly, 5% is such a small penalty, it's really hard for a newly placed city to not be justifiable until very late in the game when you're producing a really high beaker #.

Of course, just like the culture penalty, this penalty can start to become a science tax retroactively, which is hard to predict without experience.

For example, once I'm generating 1000 bpt, any city I own that's not producing at least 50 science is a burden. Possibly one that was lucrative a long time ago is no longer worth it. But hey, if it was worth it back then at least you got a temporary benefit from it.

Is it a penalty to the amount of science the city's outputting or an addition to the cost of each tech? If it's the former, you're never going to get negative science out of an additional city, but it will still discourage spreading cities for science's sake.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Is it a penalty to the amount of science the city's outputting or an addition to the cost of each tech? If it's the former, you're never going to get negative science out of an additional city, but it will still discourage spreading cities for science's sake.

addition to tech cost

and 30 size 20 cities
=600/~2.5=~240


3 size 40
=120/1.1=~110

so have cities can help, but only if they are developed

200 size 5 cities
=1000/10=~100

 

[andrewlt]

Well, let's say you have 5 cities with a university by turn 100. How long will a new pop 1 city stop being a science drain? And how long will it get back the science you lost while it was building a library/university and catching up its population?

My concern is that these type of mechanics severely discourage playing a natural growth style. Instead of growing cities while expanding, the mechanics severely discourages planting any more cities after your core reaches a certain development level.

 

[Scott Jegg]

Well, let's say you have 5 cities with a university by turn 100. How long will a new pop 1 city stop being a science drain? And how long will it get back the science you lost while it was building a library/university and catching up its population?

My concern is that these type of mechanics severely discourage playing a natural growth style. Instead of growing cities while expanding, the mechanics severely discourages planting any more cities after your core reaches a certain development level.

I guess it now makes the game a little more interesting, as you have to question whether planting a new city is worth it or not. Are you picking up resources that make the city desirable, can you grow the city fast enoght that the impact on science is negligible, is the city going to be usefule for trade routes, or is the city grabbing some important defensive terrain (etc.). It's good that (happiness permitting) new cities aren't just free science.

 

[Bas1c]

I don't know much about this expansion but from what I've read and seen in videos and such i think it should be very easy to offset this penalty.

Resolutions in world congress.

Scholars in Residence: All Civilizations research a technology 20% faster if another Civilization has already discovered it

Science Funding: Increases generation of Great Scientists, Great Engineers and Great Merchants by 33%. Decreases generation of Great Writers, Great Artists and Great Musicians by 33%.

Reformation

Jesuit Education; May build Universities, Public Schools and Research Labs with Faith.

Also being able to send production and food to other cities will help them grow much faster than they do in G&K so it may be possible to quickly have a large empire with universities and one or both of the above resolutions.

How many connections can a single city have? If 1-10 cities can all send production and food to a single city then wide empires could snowball pretty fast.

I don't own the expansion yet so could someone test some of this out?

 

[Lieu]

I guess it now makes the game a little more interesting, as you have to question whether planting a new city is worth it or not. Are you picking up resources that make the city desirable, can you grow the city fast enoght that the impact on science is negligible, is the city going to be usefule for trade routes, or is the city grabbing some important defensive terrain (etc.). It's good that (happiness permitting) new cities aren't just free science.

I guess we'll see if it leads to interesting choices in practice. I'd expect though that it will be that the science overules most other factors once it doesn't at least reach the break even point anymore. And since that's mainly a function of a.) disparity in city development and b.) Number of cities (because total science), then I'd also expect that the rule of thumb will become something along the lines of "New cities are unfavourable after around ~x turns and ~y cities". That's your soft cap right there. IMO, that's reducing options and viable playstyles. But we'll see

Maybe you could remove that nasty little edge case that causes the problems though. Put a cap on the soft cap? What I mean is prevent a city from going into effective negative science. It prevents the situation where if you deleted a city from your empire your science actually improves. As long as you agree that it's balanced to have a "wide" empire tech at an equal rate to a "tall" empire in specifically the case where the core cities are equal. I would argue this and that the problem was with all those extra cities accumulating science by sheer number of them, which of course would still not happen. It still has problems with being clear to the player, but it's better than a false choice, diversity damper and possibly being unclear already (I don't know how well the game currently tells you about this penalty).

This is why I'd have liked to try other wide science countermeasures first

/end thought