12/3 patch balance thoughts, The good, the bad, and the ugly

[alpaca]

I may be misremembering since it's been so long since I played cIV, but didn't excess happines in a city help you get WLTKD? (I honestly don't remember.)

If so, then happiness buildings had a direct effect in cities in cIV. If not, I believe they still mitigated war weariness, which ciV does not have, so they would still have situational use over the same buildings in ciV.

My point is that some buildings in ciV are literally pointless in some cases which, as I've stated before, is a terrible design choice IMO.

I don't know that situational or even somewhat suboptimal buildings are a terrible design choice but some of the buildings in Civ5 are just always terrible, like the Water Mill or the stable, and that is definitely a bad choice. I don't mind having some situational or suboptimal buildings because they either have their uses (even if they're narrow) or are interesting at least for new players to think about if they aren't obviously bad, which is of value in itself.

You have to admit, though, that something like a bank in a production city was quite useless in Civ4, although due to building maintenance this would be aggravated in Civ5. Some buildings, like temples, were generally a pretty bad idea if you wanted happiness compared to things like Markets but if you were Spiritual or low on luxuries, they became useful.

So situational is ok, but always and obviously bad isn't.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

It's not criticised because what you're saying is simply not true. Markets provide +25% gold so they are only really worthwhile in cities that produce a lot of gold, so the gain does depend on the tiles the city works and which improvements they have. The only things you should build everywhere are happiness buildings, Libraries and Universities. Everything else depends on the city's specialisation. This is in contrast to Civ4 where the things you should build everywhere were a granary, library, university and barracks. Then add as many happiness, health and culture buildings as required. Markets and such were somewhat useless in Civ4 where you usually ran a high science slider, at least you can now specialise a city on gold more easily.

I agree about the rebellions, it seems it's mostly introduced to prevent the "ignore happiness" strategy, which is a shame.

Every marketplace and bank runs a profit. That is, according to the Civ V Civilopedia, which of course is still full of errors. Maybe they have tweaked that now - the information or the gold generation. Let me just say that in Civ V, building a marketplace/bank pays off everywhere, which was not the case in Civ IV. I like Civ V a lot, but although I have tried to like that particular feature (it definitely is an easy exploit), the "build a bank everywhere and get rich" item makes no sense and favours REXers and warmongers even further. They introduced the rebellions as a check to winning an easy victory through unlimited expansion, which I believe most people approve of.

I'm not a number cruncher, but let's try this quite "realistic" example. Suppose you have an arctic city wich generates 0,25 gold every turn and has a marketplace that gives you 2 x 0,25 gold each turn but costs 2 gold in maintenance. How profitable is that? Even if you have the time and patience to build a bank there (cost: 3 gold each turn), how much joy would the income give you? As I said, I don't believe those are the coirrect numbers, but in many cities in Civ IV, building money generating buildings in each city did not pay off - quite the reverse. I think that was a good idea. It certainly discouraged exploits and infinite urban spread.

I disagree about the rebellions, which add some needed excitement and extra fun to the game.

 

[JohnnyW]

So situational is ok, but always and obviously bad isn't.

That is the point I am trying to make about the happiness buildings in civ5. If my city cannot grow past a certain amount, higher level happiness buildings will *always* be a horrible idea.

As for the water mill, I use it frequently in cities I wanted to grow (after granary) and will use it more post-patch. As for the stable....I don't believe I've used it.

 

[Sneaks]

That is the point I am trying to make about the happiness buildings in civ5. If my city cannot grow past a certain amount, higher level happiness buildings will *always* be a horrible idea.

As for the water mill, I use it frequently in cities I wanted to grow (after granary) and will use it more post-patch. As for the stable....I don't believe I've used it.

If it was not for the increasing gold maint. cost, I would regularly build even stadiums. Frankly, I do not see them being in any way less useful after the patch. I enjoy certain buildings more or less requiring larger cities to construct. It did not make much flavor sense to have a city with a population of 1,000 people to have 3 giant entertainment buildings.

 

[Buccaneer]

My only caveat with this is that there would need to be a serious rebalancing of CS quests. It can get downright annoying when all of your lovely food and culture providers only want to kill each other. I would love it if they would add CS missions that involve things like "Gift a Worker" "Gift 2 Swordsmen" "DoW Major Civ"

I disagree in that I wish they would go more into conflicts. As it is, you can ignore all diplomacy and still reap the rewards. No, they should make it harder to get the rewards from CS - making you work for it, which includes being involved in intra-city-states conflicts and wars. We should not need more easy rewards on top of an already unabalanced reward system.

 

[Sneaks]

I want more quests with rewards that are open up to the AI and player alike. Basically, means for all to bribe outside just money. Resources, Units, etc at the request of the CS.

 

[Buccaneer]

I want more quests with rewards that are open up to the AI and player alike. Basically, means for all to bribe outside just money. Resources, Units, etc at the request of the CS.

But the AI would never reap the rewards as well as a human player, thus causing even more unbalancing. And penalties can sometimes affect the AI more than a human player, if they are equally accessable. We do not need more rewards for us exploit but a better risk/reward system in which the AI has an advantage.

 

[alpaca]

Every marketplace and bank runs a profit. That is, according to the Civ V Civilopedia, which of course is still full of errors. Maybe they have tweaked that now - the information or the gold generation. Let me just say that in Civ V, building a marketplace/bank pays off everywhere, which was not the case in Civ IV. I like Civ V a lot, but although I have tried to like that particular feature (it definitely is an easy exploit), the "build a bank everywhere and get rich" item makes no sense and favours REXers and warmongers even further. They introduced the rebellions as a check to winning an easy victory through unlimited expansion, which I believe most people approve of.

I'm not a number cruncher, but let's try this quite "realistic" example. Suppose you have an arctic city wich generates 0,25 gold every turn and has a marketplace that gives you 2 x 0,25 gold each turn but costs 2 gold in maintenance. How profitable is that? Even if you have the time and patience to build a bank there (cost: 3 gold each turn), how much joy would the income give you? As I said, I don't believe those are the coirrect numbers, but in many cities in Civ IV, building money generating buildings in each city did not pay off - quite the reverse. I think that was a good idea. It certainly discouraged exploits and infinite urban spread.

I disagree about the rebellions, which add some needed excitement and extra fun to the game.

Civ4, if I may remind you, was a game that had no building maintenance at all - so every building was automatically profitable, if only marginally so. Markets and money buildings in general were bad in most cities that didn't need the happiness or health because you ran at 80% or 90% science slider setting, which is maybe my #1 reason why I like the sliders gone. The difference is just that in Civ4, other buildings were usually much more profitable than these, which is not necessarily the case in Civ5. I'm all in favor of creating stronger money-boosting buildings that cost maintenance, though.

What fun do the rebellions add when even going below -10 happiness is so painful that it should be avoided under any circumstances, unless you use the ignore happiness strategy? You're just never going to see them, so I'd have wished for a different implementation

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Civ4, if I may remind you, was a game that had no building maintenance at all - so every building was automatically profitable, if only marginally so. Markets and money buildings in general were bad in most cities that didn't need the happiness or health because you ran at 80% or 90% science slider setting, which is maybe my #1 reason why I like the sliders gone. The difference is just that in Civ4, other buildings were usually much more profitable than these, which is not necessarily the case in Civ5. I'm all in favor of creating stronger money-boosting buildings that cost maintenance, though.

What fun do the rebellions add when even going below -10 happiness is so painful that it should be avoided under any circumstances, unless you use the ignore happiness strategy? You're just never going to see them, so I'd have wished for a different implementation

We seem to agree that the money generating buildings in Civ V are somewhat overpowered.

Rebellions can only be fun if there is a ral risk that they will happen. At present, angry faces are mostly just a bore. Furthermore, you youself mention an excellent reason for including rebellions: the "ignore happiness" strategy.

 

[Bibor]

You can have production, commerce and science cities, but for some reason the difference is so difficult to see when you open the city screen.
I mean, when you opened a city screen in Civ IV you immediately noticed what the city was about.

The greatest sin of CiV building design (in my opinion) is that it doesn't draw enough power from your empire or politics (like Civ4 Granary or Marketplace did).

Lets see some more cool options that could've happened:
Monument 1 , 3 while you're at peace, 1 upkeep
Monument 1 + 1 if you have marble, 1 upkeep
Military Base city +12 , 5 upkeep, +1 during wartime
Colosseum, +3 or +4 if the city is starving

Not more sophisticated, yet it adds flavor and opens up new strategic options.

 

[Sneaks]

I fully agree with that assessment, Bibor. It would add far more dynamic into whether to DoW. It would be wonderful if it caused multiple routes to the same endgame to appear. Perhaps have Universities give less Science during war, but Bases add beakers. This would allow for a warmonger to focus on warmongering building without taking a hit in tech too deep to recover from. In the realm of culture, it could see a rise in more interesting cultural warmongering from Askia and Monty. Maybe Siam gets smaller CS bonuses at war, or Alex gets larger ones at war.

Alas, I think our best option of getting any of these things is through the excellent modding efforts of users, and not a future patch.

 

[alpaca]

We seem to agree that the money generating buildings in Civ V are somewhat overpowered.

Rebellions can only be fun if there is a ral risk that they will happen. At present, angry faces are mostly just a bore. Furthermore, you youself mention an excellent reason for including rebellions: the "ignore happiness" strategy.

Actually, no we don't. Money buildings in Civ5 are far from overpowered, they are quite weak in fact. The problem is that, apart from science and happiness, all other buildings are severely underpowered, to the point of often not only not providing a significant benefit but doing downright harm to your economy. So you're left with building the money buildings.

I'm not against including rebellions, quite the contrary. I'm just saying that the -10 step is already so painful that you'll do everything you can to avoid it unless you play with a very goofy strategy, so the only time when you're going to see them is if you completely ignore happiness. Since that is bad play anyways, you will never, ever see a rebellion.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I followed a couple strategy threads where players quickly annexed a bunch of cities and were down to 37 Since they were close to winning, they pushed on and won. Imagine what it would be like if they had rebels pop up on half of the globe?

 

[Yzman]

I have had a few times where I was at war on multiple fronts and then the AI gave up and I obtained 2 whole civs or so in a peace deal. This brought my happiness down to -65. The rebels would definitely make me consider possibly not accepting all of those cities.

 

[Buccaneer]

I have had a few times where I was at war on multiple fronts and then the AI gave up and I obtained 2 whole civs or so in a peace deal. This brought my happiness down to -65. The rebels would definitely make me consider possibly not accepting all of those cities.

You can see it now. There will be an outcry from those complaining about this, saying it's unfair or not fun. Then we will see a mod taking this out (or delaying it three turns to give time for the cities to be razed).

 

[Sneaks]

I hope that does not get altered. If I am taking over half some civilization, I expect the people in those cities to be pissed about it.

 

[neilkaz]

I have had a few times where I was at war on multiple fronts and then the AI gave up and I obtained 2 whole civs or so in a peace deal. This brought my happiness down to -65. The rebels would definitely make me consider possibly not accepting all of those cities.

I am also not a fan of rebellions and the -10 unhappy penalty is bad enough. Lets hope that after the patch, when you immediately raze a conquered or gifted city, it doesn't count as annexed and instead counts as puppetted.

This solves this problem and a couple others. .. neilkaz ..

 

[Yzman]

I am also not a fan of rebellions and the -10 unhappy penalty is bad enough. Lets hope that after the patch, when you immediately raze a conquered or gifted city, it doesn't count as annexed and instead counts as puppetted.

This solves this problem and a couple others. .. neilkaz ..

Don't be mistaken. I was merely quoting a situation where I have had -20 or more to counter the people that are saying we will never encounter it. I have no problem with the idea of rebels. I think it adds more decisions. Do I accept this treaty that will cripple them but also will make my civ rebel against me? Or do I continue taking over 1 by 1? Or do I simply just declare peace, refusing the cities? There are many options.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I followed a couple strategy threads where players quickly annexed a bunch of cities and were down to 37 Since they were close to winning, they pushed on and won. Imagine what it would be like if they had rebels pop up on half of the globe?

That would make for an exciting game. In all versions of Civ, there have been complaints that the late game is "slow". This could be one way to counteract it.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I may be misremembering since it's been so long since I played cIV, but didn't excess happines in a city help you get WLTKD? (I honestly don't remember.)

If so, then happiness buildings had a direct effect in cities in cIV. If not, I believe they still mitigated war weariness, which ciV does not have, so they would still have situational use over the same buildings in ciV.

My point is that some buildings in ciV are literally pointless in some cases which, as I've stated before, is a terrible design choice IMO.

On the contrary, it's an excellent design choice, which they also made in Civ IV. Instead of mechanically constructing every building in every city, you have to consider whether it's worth it.