Why was increasing tech costs removed?

[gamemaster3000]

Just played my first three hours of Civ6, was curious why increasing tech costs went away, even though I kind of hated it.

Ever since Civ1 I've gotten used to early territory wars so I'm kind of a warmonger. But it gave me reason to not gobble up every polar city on Earth.

IMO the perfect iteration of Civ, on a map with 60 cities winning with 4 would be as viable as winning with 5, 6, 10, 15...or 60.

I'm also super excited that in the way Civ 5 got rid of stacks of doom, Civ 6 districts and wonders appear to be getting rid of cities of doom.

 

[historix69]

"increasing tech costs" are compensated by increasing costs for settlers and builders. Settler base cost is 80 with an increment of 20, so they cost 80, 100, 120, 140, 160, ...
District costs scale from 60 to 600 while you progress through tech tree and civic tree ...
Expansion by conquest comes with diplomatic costs (Warmonger Points) unless you have diplomatic skills like Machiavelli ...

 

[gamemaster3000]

It's a little tough because there's a lot of outdated info out there, but as of June 2017 what are the non-diplomatic penalties to going wide?

 

[historix69]

Afaik there are none ...

 

[Tacgnol]

There are only a limited number of luxuries in each game, and each luxury can only provide amenities to 4 cities, so once you pass a certain number of cities you will no longer get any amenities from luxuries in your new cities at all and will need to build a lot of entertainment complexes, which take a very long time to build, take up a district slot and seriously reduce the usefulness of low-pop, late game cities.

This really isn't even a penalty to going wide, though, it's more of a penalty to late-game expansion.

 

[historix69]

see https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/amenity-guide.602364/

You can get global amenities from Policy Cards, Religion and Wonders. Also, you only need one fully developed Entertainment District for all city centers in 6 tiles radius. So you can fill the world with size 10 (or maybe size 20?) cities without having to worry about wasting your luxuries. The only problem is the unlimited increase in price for settler and builder since you pay more for each unit based on the numbers you have built/purchased so far. Population Growth is regulated by Housing.

 

[Amrunril]

I'd say the reason for the removal of science cost scaling is that it was a somewhat arbitrary (and possibly unnecessary) solution for a Civ V balance issue and that, when building new system, it makes sense to remove that sort of fix until and unless they prove necessary.

Civ VI's city management system seems to be built on the principle more cities is always better than having fewer cities and that having more development in those cities is always better than having less. This makes a lot of sense, but I do think that, as the balance currently stands, expansion is too important relative to development. I think that the primary reason for this is that too much science comes from raw population. Expansion should provide the potential for more science and culture output, but it shouldn't give you so much of them automatically. (A secondary, and somewhat harder to solve, issue is that once a city has completed its highest priority district and that district's buildings, further development does very little to improve that district's yield).

 

[historix69]

(A secondary, and somewhat harder to solve, issue is that once a city has completed its highest priority district and that district's buildings, further development does very little to improve that district's yield).

You can build more districts or found another city close by and use its districts to push the high priority district's adjacency boni further ... (depends on adjacency rules for the district and your civ)

 

[Amrunril]

You can build more districts or found another city close by and use its districts to push the high priority district's adjacency boni further ... (depends on adjacency rules for the district and your civ)

True, but adding another point or two of adjacency bonuses is pretty trivial compared to adding another of the same district in a different city. Increasing the benefit of specialists or making it harder to build the same district in every city would do a lot more to address this.

 

[historix69]

You can use Policy Cards which double Adjacency Bonus.
Now imagine you have District A, your high priority district, and District B which gives a +2 Bonus to District A.

In City 1 you build District A1 (no bonus), then District B1 which gives bonus to A1 of +2 x 2 = +4.
Now build a second city with District B2 close to A1, to double the bonus to +8 (or +10 with number of district adjacency bonus.).
(When there is space, you usually also add another District A2, which profits from B1 and B2 and gets another +8 (or +10).)

In theory 3 cities can overlap so that A1 has adjacencies with B1, B2, B3 (+12) while A2 and A3 each still have 2 adjacencies with Bs (+8).
Usually you also get adjacency bonus for number of districts around (+1 for 2 districts) which can add another +6.
This 3-city-complex would yield +18 +14 +14 as base yield for districts A1-3.

This all depends highly on available terrain and ressources (which might block district placement) as well as adjacency rules for the district type A and your civ.

 

[TruthfulCake]

Increasing tech costs for going wide makes no sense as a penalty (that was one of the reasons why Tradition was a no-brainer in BNW). The way I see it, with the luxuries' scarcity, the lack of amenities is a good obstacle to going wide. You can counter that with Entertainment Districts, but those also get more expensive as the game progresses, in addition to taking up a district slot that you could use for something better. While unhappiness is not as crippling as it was in V, the effect is noticeable.

I think the line has been blurred between "tall" and "wide." You can't go too tall because of housing problems, and you can't go too wide because of the abovementioned checks. Now it's just a matter of placing cities when/where it makes sense, not Infinite City Sprawl nor four Towers of Babel.

 

[Leyrann]

Why was increasing tech costs removed?

Because it was the worst mechanic ever put into a 4X game.

 

[UWHabs]

Increasing tech costs for going wide makes no sense as a penalty (that was one of the reasons why Tradition was a no-brainer in BNW). The way I see it, with the luxuries' scarcity, the lack of amenities is a good obstacle to going wide. You can counter that with Entertainment Districts, but those also get more expensive as the game progresses, in addition to taking up a district slot that you could use for something better. While unhappiness is not as crippling as it was in V, the effect is noticeable.

I think the line has been blurred between "tall" and "wide." You can't go too tall because of housing problems, and you can't go too wide because of the abovementioned checks. Now it's just a matter of placing cities when/where it makes sense, not Infinite City Sprawl nor four Towers of Babel.

Yep, there are enough checks in there that city spam is discouraged, but there's essentially no downside to new cities. The main flaw I have right now is that after the middle ages, it takes new cities forever to get online unless if you dedicate a lot of traders to help it along, or it has enough resources to chop and harvest to get it started. And since my cities are always way too busy building stuff, even just to pause to build a settler doesn't tend to be worth it.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

One of the reasons I prefer Germany. mid-late game, once you get a Hansa up, the city improves much faster.
(can then buy workshop/factory)

I prefer this to the escalating science/culture costs from 5. I think.

 

[TruthfulCake]

Yep, there are enough checks in there that city spam is discouraged, but there's essentially no downside to new cities. The main flaw I have right now is that after the middle ages, it takes new cities forever to get online unless if you dedicate a lot of traders to help it along, or it has enough resources to chop and harvest to get it started. And since my cities are always way too busy building stuff, even just to pause to build a settler doesn't tend to be worth it.

Yeah, this is one of those things I wish the game would improve on. In the Vox Populi mod in Civ V, there are upgrades to the Settler units based on era, who get additional buildings pre-built when they settle. I think that this concept can be implemented in the form of "X amount of hammers allocated for districts" in newly settled cities using, for example, a Pioneer (Renaissance Settler). It would encourage colonization, and civilizations with bonuses for overseas settling will get to use their ability to full effect throughout the game.

 

[historix69]

The costs for monument, granary and watermill are fixed. You can usually rushbuy them in lategame since they are cheap in comparison to all the other items which escalate (worker, settler, trader, districts).

 

[UWHabs]

The costs for monument, granary and watermill are fixed. You can usually rushbuy them in lategame since they are cheap in comparison to all the other items which escalate (worker, settler, trader, districts).

Yeah, but it still costs ~700 gold to rush all 3 of them, and while I agree it does help the city grow to at least size 3-4 fairly early, it doesn't really help enough to get a city going.

Ideally, I think I would want an upgraded unit (pioneer), which should give you those buildings when you found a new city, as well as start the city at size 3, and probably also spawn a free builder at the same time. Give me a builder and those buildings and then new cities can potentially come online early enough, but otherwise I find it's just too much effort. To found a new city and get it online rush-buying everything is probably costing me 1500 gold, and most of the time, I'd be in much better shape by just buying an extra bombard or cavalry instead.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It was a broken mechanic by concept. It punished someone for making very costly investment into expansion by conquest, beyond the cost of succeeding in the attempt. Effectively it neutered an x in 4x, but also made the game more centralized/less meaningful choices in the process.

 

[TheSharp]

4 cities should never be as viable as 60, period. And tech scaling costs was indeed a broken mechanic by concept.

In civ 6 I don't like how districts become more expansive because of your civic and tech progress, instead have it based on your total amount of build districts or something.

 

[bbbt]

I'm glad they dropped the scaling tech costs, but personally, I think it's gone too far the other way - I've never had much happiness issues (even with like a 20 city empire) except for an extended war where I have conquered cities. Peacetime happiness issues are almost nil.

Personally I'd like to see happiness a little harder to come by (perhaps drop the free amenity per city except in a 6 tile radius of your capital), have cities rebel a little easier, and then have the rebels be able to capture said city and turn it into a rebel city - that was no longer part of your empire, and could be captured by anyone (including you) without an actual war (essentially like an upgraded barb camp) - maybe also a diplomatic way to bring them into your empire as well. It would mean you could found all the cities you want, but not necessarily keep them in your empire. It would also mean that the AI's across-the-continent forward-settled cities would be more likely to rebel and be able to be welcomed into your empire.