A core set of balance changes

[Celevin]

You are mistaken again! Food is not the reason YOU see as being the factor for high population because you are a warmonger and expansionist by preference. If I only have 1 city, then clearly, the food curve of getting that city to 126 is going to be nearly impossible to surmount, if the game even codes that far.

Clearly, the one-city population comparison is an extreme, but it illustrates the point. If you have less cities, then food issues become a major limiting factor for growth. If you refrain from settling or conquering and keeping more than 5 cities, you should be seeing gratuitous amounts of excess happiness.

Changing Maritimes to allow an empire with less cities to experience the same population growth vertically as a empire with more cities does across many cities does something to equalize the situation.

I do not believe you are familiar with this situation because I have yet to see you in a game where you have less than 5 cities, and you don't show insight into the differences between the styles when you insist on population equality. Large empires will always have more populations.

I have played both ways. Now, I have not played both ways against AIs with more handicaps to them, but I don't believe the internal economy of the game changes. Maritimes don't get me more food on lower difficulty settings, no?

Don't label me. I've played pretty much every way you can in Civ5. I am not an expansionist, or a warmonger. You have seen a grand total of 1 screenshot of my games. I guarantee you that I have a solid grasp on the mechanics. Attacking my playstyles that you don't know about won't get you anywhere, especially since you just admitted not playing on higher difficulty levels. While that's not a fault to your argument, it is completely ironic. Furthering this is that you don't have a grasp on why Maritime city states are so powerful. To clarify my entire point on why this has started: more population always has and always will equal a better empire.

I'm done arguing, this is not going anywhere.

 

[Roxlimn]

If you have such a solid grasp of the mechanics, then why are you insisting on an arbitrary comparison where a empire with less cities is going the have the same population as an empire with more cities? You know that that's never going to happen. Why balance modifications around a nonexistent situation? Is there some sort of logic behind such reasoning?

You say you have a solid grasp of the mechanics, but then you apply the reasoning for many-city Civs (happiness as limit of population growth) and then talk about it when speaking of few-city Civs (food as limit of population growth), or worse, say it like it was a general truth, which it clearly isn't.

Under the current rules, a Military City State will gift you one unit regardless of size. To a large empire with lots of everything, it hardly seems worth the money. To a smaller empire with few of everything, it means that much less hammers you spend on units and less gold on Barracks and Armories.

Cultural CSs are the same thing.

Arguably, Maritime should then be changed to have the same dynamic. More for less cities, less for more cities.

In what way is it a hopeless cause to attempt to give Civs with less cities leverages they can use to pull themselves up?

 

[stii]

Nice to see Roxlimn telling people how to play civ in yet another thread.

 

[Roxlimn]

stii:

Not at all. I was questioning an assumption Celevin was proposing which was self-evidently impossible: that a Civ with 1 city will have the same population as a Civ with 70 cities in the same length of game time - ie, that they are comparable.

I am not telling Celevin how to play the game, and this should be obvious if you read what I wrote without a jaundiced eye.

Why contest this? Do you think, as he does, that we ought to balance the City States between Civs on the assumption that large Civs and small Civs would have similar populations?

 

[Ahriman]

For all future arguments, we need the difference between a "big empire" and a "small empire" to be just the number of cities. We need to hold the population as a constant, otherwise we'll get nowhere. And while there's a huge difference in population now, that will quickly close with the change to Maritimes and the addition of aqueducts.

I don't think this is quite right. Even with these changes, a civ with more cities will have more pop, all else equal, because the large cities will still grow slower. And a Many cities strat is one which conquers cities and keeps them, whereas a Few Cities strat will often raze them or gift them to weak powers.

I think it is better to compare in general a "many cities strat" vs "few cities strat" than literally try to hold Pop fixed.

My point is, holding population equal and having similar infrastructure, two civs should have roughly the same policy output

And I disagree with this.
More cities strat vs Few Cities strat have different advantages.

More cities strat will have more terrain (culture cost per claimed tile increases, so 2 cities with +5 culture each will claim more tiles than 1 city with +10 culture), more resources, etc.
Few cities strat gets more policies.

Go for a culture win as fast as humanly possible without selling cities to reduce policy costs. How many cities will you have in the early, mid, and late game? With no "static bonuses" in the culture equation with the # of cities being the variable, it could be any number.

Disagree. You will find those last few policies very expensive with many cities. With many cities, you can't possibly keep up the same number of culture per city, particularly with things like Constitution (or Hermitage).
You will do better with fewer cities.
There was a great thread crunching numbers on this, showing that new cities need to be giving 50+ culture each in order to not slow down your rate of culture acquisition.

Isn't that more exciting?

No, if it were true it would be less exciting. It would remove the strategic tension from expanding, and it would make it so you could get any victory condition with any playstyle.
I think the game is far better if a passive victory condition is hard to get, and requires a specific, focused playstyle (lack of expansion) to achieve.

Nerfing Forbidden palace and/or increasing unhappiness penalty per city might also be a good way to go, however.

And for the record, Maritime city states never caused the population difference. HAPPINESS causes population difference

Food requirements cause a LOT of the population difference.
The basic fact is that a city of size X needs at least twice as much cumulative food as do 2 cities of size X/2, and yet excess food stays roughly constant as cities grow.

I'm done arguing, this is not going anywhere.

Guys, chill, there is no reason why this can't be a civil discussion.
Its perfectly plausible for example to have a game design where in general adding more cities slows the rate of policy acquisition, but doesn't slow the marginal increase in policy acquisition rate from cultural city states. These aren't mutually contradictory.
This is a fair point; adding more cities doesn't decrease the marginal value of a military city state (though it reduces its relative value), so its not unreasonable to suggest that it shouldn't decrease the marginal value of a cultural city state (or shouldn't decrease it by much).

 

[Celevin]

I can't show the obscenity of the situation without a picture, I guess. Here's how big the problem is.

I will upload the raw spreadsheet if I get enough demand.

EDIT: Check latest post

 

[Ahriman]

I don't understand your graphic at all. Please label the axes and explain wth you're talking about, and which situation you are discussing.

 

[Celevin]

It's # of cities VS culture produced.

The situation is the obscenity of cultural city states, ie the original topic discussed. This shows how much culture you're gaining towards your next policy for varying numbers of cities, using fairly late game values.

EDIT: One second, my values got skewed. Let me re-upload the picture. Sorry, was in a rush this morning.

 

[Ahriman]

It's # of cities VS culture produced.

This still doesn't make sense. If every city produces 50 culture, and you have 100 culture from cultural city states, then # cities vs culture per turn is a simple function:
culture per turn = 100 + 50*(#cities).

Adding cities doesn't reduce culture.

Are you talking about average culture per city, or some kind of number of turns needed to reach a new policy (ie including the increase in policy cost from new cities)?

Using works like obscenity to describe a design decision you disagree with also just makes you look foolish.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a design where cultural strategies and cultural city states are supposed to favor strategies with few cities. Its not the only way to do it, but its one way to do it.

 

[Celevin]

This still doesn't make sense. If every city produces 50 culture, and you have 100 culture from cultural city states, then # cities vs culture per turn is a simple function:
culture per turn = 100 + 50*(#cities).

Adding cities doesn't reduce culture.

Are you talking about average culture per city, or some kind of number of turns needed to reach a new policy (ie including the increase in policy cost from new cities)?

Using works like obscenity to describe a design decision you disagree with also just makes you look foolish.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a design where cultural strategies and cultural city states are supposed to favor strategies with few cities. Its not the only way to do it, but its one way to do it.

I had an error in my function. It's more complicated than you're making it out to be. Since policy costs increase as your number of cities increases, to see the relative change in policy costs by changing the number of cities, you have to divide the culture produced by the policy cost multiplier.

I don't look foolish by using the word "obscene". I look foolish because I screwed up on the data I was trying to present, as I was doing ten things at once . I'll take more time on this one.

The function I am using is: (sum of all culture gains) / (policy cost multiplier). The potential culture gains are from cultural city states, puppets, and of course the cities themselves. I am using 30% as the addition to policy cost per new city. I excluded puppets entirely from my example, as the data's so skewed we can't get a proper read.

The first graph presented is the culture from only city states, and how much culture it adds depending on the size of your empire. I used 100 as base: this number does not matter to get the point across. The big point is the culture given HALVES at 5 cities, and HALVES again at 10. So for a medium (not even large) empire, cultural city states are at 1/4 effectiveness.

The second graph presented is the culture from city states, and the culture per city. I used numbers from one of my games at its midpoint. 110 culture from city states, and the culture from all my individual cities. The graph represents how much culture I would produce for each number of city (as in if I sold one, or picked up more). I used numbers close to what I've had in actual games: a large amount of culture for the capitol, lesser numbers for surrounding cities (around 6), and a fairly rough drop after that. The trend is you're at roughly 72% effectiveness at 6 cities compared to 1, and 52% effectiveness at 12 cities compared to 1. That means that a 1 city empire will have 40% more policies than a 6 city empire.

My entire point again:
Cultural city states have huge diminishing returns with empire size. Smaller empires already have an advantage since the starting cities already produce amazing amounts of culture. You will not see many (optimal) culture wins above 4 cities, with 1 city being the very best by far. Changing cultural city states will not make bigger empires better at producing culture, but will simply narrow the gap. It's obscene when I win in 1700 by a culture win with 1 city.


Sorry for the headache.

 

[Ahriman]

Since policy costs increase as your number of cities increases, to see the relative change in policy costs by changing the number of cities, you have to divide the culture produced by the policy cost multiplier.

It depends what you are measuring. If you are literally measuring culture income per turn, then no, you don't divide anything. Adding cities increases the cost of more policies, it doesn't reduce absolute culture output.

If you are measuring something that is effectively "# turns until next new policy" then you should do that.

There is no plain interpretation of "culture output adjusted downwards by the increasing policy costs from more cities".
That is not a variable that actually shows up anywhere in the game, so it is not very useful to graph.

So for a medium (not even large) empire, cultural city states are at 1/4 effectiveness.

10 non-puppet cities is pretty substantial.
And with more cities, you can have more income, and get more city states allied with you.
So: so what?
If your point is just "if you have lots of cities, then cultural city states are much less effective" then I agree with that.
Its just you haven't made an argument that this is a problem.

My entire point again:
Cultural city states have huge diminishing returns with empire size. Smaller empires already have an advantage since the starting cities already produce amazing amounts of culture. You will not see many (optimal) culture wins above 4 cities, with 1 city being the very best by far.

So what?
As I've argued, expansion is what you should have to give up in order to get a cultural win, because a cultural win is a passive victory that the other players are unable to prevent except by conquering you.
So, you should have to make yourself more vulnerable to being conquered in order to achieve it.

I'm amenable to the possibility of making it so that the marginal contribution of cultural city states to gaining policies should decrease more slowly with city number, which is what your ~X + 0.3X per city would do (though I might use something less than 0.3, so that it is not a perfect offset). But I strongly disagree with the idea that the rate of policy acquisition in general should not decrease with city size.

 

[Roxlimn]

A one-city empire with 40% more policies than a 6-city empire is still weaker in every area of the game other than approaching a cultural victory. If you ask me, we should modify maritime states so that they benefits they give follow the same curve!

 

[Celevin]

It depends what you are measuring. If you are literally measuring culture income per turn, then no, you don't divide anything. Adding cities increases the cost of more policies, it doesn't reduce absolute culture output.

If you are measuring something that is effectively "# turns until next new policy" then you should do that.

There is no plain interpretation of "culture output adjusted downwards by the increasing policy costs from more cities".
That is not a variable that actually shows up anywhere in the game, so it is not very useful to graph.

Right now here is how it works:
(sum of culture) compared to (base policy cost * policy cost multiplier) where the multiplier is say 30% for each additional city, plus 1 for your capitol.

All I'm doing is (sum of culture) / (policy cost multiplier) compared to (base policy cost). Both will give me the same number of turns until the next policy. It's the easiest way of directly comparing how fast you gain policies depending on the number of cities. This trick also allows me to ignore what the base policy cost actually IS, and just concentrate on how fast you get the policy.

10 non-puppet cities is pretty substantial.
And with more cities, you can have more income, and get more city states allied with you.
So: so what?
If your point is just "if you have lots of cities, then cultural city states are much less effective" then I agree with that.
Its just you haven't made an argument that this is a problem.

6 non-puppets is not a lot, and that's when it halves. In fact, I'd call that a small empire on standard maps (which is where the 30% cost increase comes from). Halving the effectiveness of city states is absolutely massive. If I was going for a fast win, I'd want to double the effectiveness of city states (where 1/4 of my culture comes from in a lot of my wins).

The problem is that this and puppets lead to 1-city passive wins. This is only 1/3 of the problem, but it's still there. The only reason it's not being noticed is because puppets completely eclipse it. In my 1700 AD 1-city culture win, 1/4 of my culture was from city states, and 1/2 was from puppets.

So what?
As I've argued, expansion is what you should have to give up in order to get a cultural win, because a cultural win is a passive victory that the other players are unable to prevent except by conquering you.
So, you should have to make yourself more vulnerable to being conquered in order to achieve it.

I'm amenable to the possibility of making it so that the marginal contribution of cultural city states to gaining policies should decrease more slowly with city number, which is what your ~X + 0.3X per city would do (though I might use something less than 0.3, so that it is not a perfect offset). But I strongly disagree with the idea that the rate of policy acquisition in general should not decrease with city size.

I'd agree to some kind of cultural city state scaling. As it stands right now, you can count city states as being "+x culture to the capitol". If we had it at +y to the capitol and +.15y per city, or anything other than a lump sum to the capitol, it would help things out. I'm not completely dead set on it scaling exactly, it just appeared that way due to the pages and pages of arguing.

Here's my original argument, before the fiasco with Roxlimn, rephrased: If we don't change cultural city states and take out the puppet advantage, it changes the questions a player asks when they want to build a new city. It could be a great location, they could have the money for several happiness/culture buildings, but they will still not build it because of how weighted policies are towards low (ie 1) city empires. If we change both cultural city states and take out the puppet advantage, a cultural player will consider building a new city an advantage if it's in a great spot, and they have money for infrastructure. If this change works the way it's supposed to, it should alter culture wins so they are less strategy guide feeling, and more of a "play the map" feeling. The majority will still be small empire, but at least we will see different numbers of cities than 1-4.

Remember what you said, that is every change needs to be considered at the same time. If you alter Maritime city states and put in an aqueduct, you'll start to see much larger cities in small empires, with a lot more artist specialists working and a lot more cash/production. We have to keep these in check, as right now culture's already the fastest way to win even without puppets. People are already winning passively with 1 city, which just feels wrong.

 

[Ahriman]

If you ask me, we should modify maritime states so that they benefits they give follow the same curve!

Disagree here. I think its possible to have the absolute benefits of maritime city states to not increase with number of cities/population, but I think it would be a huge mistake to make it decrease.

I do think though that the dropoff in the value of cultural city states might be a little bit too high, but I think we can't just look at the benefits without considering that with more cities and larger pop we will have more gold income with which we can ally with more city states.

So an approach that only looks at benefits per-city-state isn't complete.

 

[Ahriman]

As I've argued, expansion is what you should have to give up in order to get a cultural win, because a cultural win is a passive victory that the other players are unable to prevent except by conquering you.
So, you should have to make yourself more vulnerable to being conquered in order to achieve it.

I don't see you address this anywhere.

if we had it at +y to the capitol and +.15y per city

This seems reasonable.

But I have no problem with creating tension with building a new city. Even with this change, you are still going to need a small number of cities to get a cultural win.

We have to keep these in check, as right now culture's already the fastest way to win even without puppets.

Depending on the map, Diplomatic can be easier and Conquest can be faster (especially with Companion Cav).
But fastest != easiest.

People are already winning passively with 1 city, which just feels wrong.

The appropriate to this is not to make it easier to get a cultural win with more cities, but to make a single city more vulnerable to conquest (maybe just through AI aggression) such that it is incredibly hard to survive with just a single city.

I have no problem with it being easiest to get a cultural win with 1 city in a purely hypothetical situation where the other players ignore you all game.
The challenge of a 1-city game should be military and economic; its hard for you to get the gold to do much, hard for you to support much of an army, hard to get the population for much tech, and thus generally more vulnerable to being conquered by large armies of superior-tech opponents.

 

[Celevin]

As I've argued, expansion is what you should have to give up in order to get a cultural win, because a cultural win is a passive victory that the other players are unable to prevent except by conquering you.
So, you should have to make yourself more vulnerable to being conquered in order to achieve it.

I have no problem with it being easiest to get a cultural win with 1 city in a purely hypothetical situation where the other players ignore you all game.
The challenge of a 1-city game should be military and economic; its hard for you to get the gold to do much, hard for you to support much of an army, hard to get the population for much tech, and thus generally more vulnerable to being conquered by large armies of superior-tech opponents.

This change won't make you more or less vulnerable to other civs. It's just there to make 1-city empires a bit less valuable compared to 4 city empires, or 6 city empires. It won't make large empires culture kings, and most importantly, REXing still won't be a viable culture strategy. Even with 1 city empires being the most vulnerable, the raw amount of culture gained makes up for it. If they are ignored, or are on a separate landmass, or simply have good policies (Tradition, Freedom for bonus defense), they won't be taken out. Especially since the lack of expansion means coms don't attack you very much if at all. Fastest can equal easiest in a variety of circumstances.

I just also find it... dumb that a 1-city empire has an easier time gaining policies over an empire that has 4 cities of equal worth. Policies should be gained faster if you have great cities with all the works pumping out culture.

Another point is currently cultural cities do not scale with map size. In smaller maps the cultural city states offer a much larger chunk of your total culture. This is the same kind of problem that we have with happiness right now: there's a large, static chunk that causes things to mess up with different maps. Changing it to y for the capitol and xy where x is the multiplier based on the map size will make it scale.

 

[Ahriman]

This change won't make you more or less vulnerable to other civs.

?
Never said it did. My point was that having only a single city should make you more vulnerable to other civs. If other civs aren't attacking and conquering the weak 1-city culture-whore, then fix *that*.

I think you're missing the point, which is that "As I've argued, expansion is what you should have to give up in order to get a cultural win, because a cultural win is a passive victory that the other players are unable to prevent except by conquering you.
So, you should have to make yourself more vulnerable to being conquered in order to achieve it."
is aimed at your proposition that the number turns to get a new policy should not vary with empire size.

This I still strongly disagree with.
As I've said above, I can easily live with say +y to the capitol and +.15y per city for cultural city states.

If they are ignored, or are on a separate landmass, ..., they won't be taken out. Especially since the lack of expansion means coms don't attack you very much if at all.

Then these are the appropriate things to change, not messing with culture.

I just also find it... dumb that a 1-city empire has an easier time gaining policies over an empire that has 4 cities of equal worth

Ignoring cultural city states, this isn't necessarily true. If a new policy costs 200 and the first city has culture output of 20, it will take 10 turns. If you add 3 cities which each also have 20 culture income, policy cost goes up to to 380 (I think?), and culture income goes up to 80, and so it takes less than 5 turns.
(If I'm wrong on the 30% and its cumulative, then culture cost goes up to 580, and so it takes 8 turns).

And with cultural city states, with 4 cities you have much more gold income, so can buy more city state alliances.

Another point is currently cultural cities do not scale with map size.

The *game* doesn't scale well with mapsize. Still the same number of total luxuries, the same policies (some that benefit small empires, others that benefit large empires), the same wonders (eiffel tower and notre dame even weaker on a small map, forbidden palace even more powerful on a large map), etc.

 

[Roxlimn]

I don't agree with the position that one city play is "dumb," if "dumb" means some nonspecific derogatory statement in place for something more informative.

A six city empire can be significantly less vulnerable than a 1 city one, keep the peace, and still reliably win Culture, since the AI never goes for it anyway.

 

[Celevin]

I think you're missing the point, which is that "As I've argued, expansion is what you should have to give up in order to get a cultural win, because a cultural win is a passive victory that the other players are unable to prevent except by conquering you.
So, you should have to make yourself more vulnerable to being conquered in order to achieve it."
is aimed at your proposition that the number turns to get a new policy should not vary with empire size.

Did I really argue that policy gains should be equal for all empire sizes? I don't believe I did. What I'm arguing is there's a gross divide due to this static amount of culture inflow. By taking out this static amount, you make policy gains based on how good your cities are rather than it being completely dominated by a very small empire. Right now, a 1-city empire with the same infrastructure will out-policy a 6 city empire. My proposed change will close the gap.

Small empires will still be better at getting policies than larger ones because:
1) They have better infrastructure
2) The policy trees that favour small empires also help gain more policies

The *game* doesn't scale well with mapsize. Still the same number of total luxuries, the same policies (some that benefit small empires, others that benefit large empires), the same wonders (eiffel tower and notre dame even weaker on a small map, forbidden palace even more powerful on a large map), etc.

And one of the goals should be to make it scale.

We already scaled Maritime city states. Now we scale cultural city states. Then we scale happiness (I've got a good idea). Then we scale everything else. This shouldn't even be part of the argument, scaling is good.

Ignoring cultural city states, this isn't necessarily true. If a new policy costs 200 and the first city has culture output of 20, it will take 10 turns. If you add 3 cities which each also have 20 culture income, policy cost goes up to to 380 (I think?), and culture income goes up to 80, and so it takes less than 5 turns.
(If I'm wrong on the 30% and its cumulative, then culture cost goes up to 580, and so it takes 8 turns).

I'm not ignoring cultural city states at all in my reasoning though. The reason a 1-city empire is so good is because of cultural city states and puppets. It's just that puppets are dominating so much that we aren't even looking at the cultural city states. It's a problem, just much smaller.

Actually ignoring cultural city states and puppets, and keeping everything equal, your policy gain rate will always increase. Here's the appropriate graph, labelled the same as my last. I used 20 culture per city:

 

[Ahriman]

Did I really argue that policy gains should be equal for all empire sizes? I don't believe I did.

Perhaps I misinterpreted, from:

It will feel like the bigger empires are still missing out on an aspect of the game by not having nearly as many policies.

and

I think, big or small, empires should want city states and receive around the same number of policies.

felt like you were saying that big empires should have just as many policies as smaller empires.
Which I strongly disagree with.

We also need to be clear about whether we are just talking about:
a) the marginal impact of cultural city states on rate of policy acquisition, vs
b) base rate of policy acquisition (ignoring cultural city states).
I'm ok with reducing the rate at which larger empires have their marginal impact of cultural city state benefit degraded. This is what X + 0.15X does.
Though I think its important to not keep the marginal impact of a single cultural city state constant, since a larger empire can buy more cultural city states.

I'm not ok with reducing the rate at which larger empires have their absolute rate of policy degraded (the 30% cost increase for each extra city).

1) They have better infrastructure

How so? How does settling an extra city somewhere reduce the infrastructure in my core cities?

The policy trees that favour small empires also help gain more policies

None of those policies are weaker if you have more cities (in absolute terms).

scaling is good.

Agreed in general, but it is very hard.

and keeping everything equal, your policy gain rate will always increase

Keeping everything else equal doesn't actually replicate real gameplay, because extra cities in practice won't have the same cultural output as the older ones.