Am I the only one that doesnt like opening with Prosperity?

[mnf]

Initial expansion health shouldn’t really affect virtue acquisition by then. You will have had plenty of time to spam Cyto/Pharma/G-Garden/BioLab and Biowells to fix your health if you really want to. And you should be closing in on XenoSanc/Holosuite/FeedsiteHub/Holomatrix, as well.

Oh I wasn't worried about health, but rather about the number-of-city penalties to virtue acquisition.

REX means more expensive techs and virtues, which means it's a lot more difficult to get Networked Datalinks and Memeweb unless we start Knowledge. Slower tech also means it takes longer (or we'd have to beeline) to get the culture buildings.

Well, theoretically, anyway. I actually don't know the exact penalties so maybe it isn't that harsh, and not REX-ing actually doesn't help much with virtue acquisition anyway?

 

[Aeson]

The penalty for tech is 5% cost increase per city. For Virtues it's 10% per city. (Standard.) Both have the 40% reduction Virtues, so probably something like (I haven't looked at the code to see how it's applied) 3% and 6%. Getting 20 - 30 cities should be optimal for Tech and Virtue rate. It's more efficient to get them peacefully (REX) than militarily.

(All of this assumes absolute Tech and Virtue rate is of utmost importance. It isn't. There are other things that are important as well.)

 

[Acken]

It must be noted that these penalties are additive and not multiplicative afak. Making every increase based on the base cost and not on the previous cost.

 

[Aeson]

That's my understanding of it.

 

[mnf]

That is very interesting. I was always under the impression that these penalties would make a real big difference.

Colony with 8 cities = +24% cost on tech, +48% cost on virtue
Colony with 30 cities = 90% cost on tech, +180% cost on virtue

Difference is about 65% cheaper tech and 52% cheaper virtue. Looks like I've been worrying too much about this penalty. It's a significant amount, but it doesn't feel enough to counter the benefits of a wide colony.

 

[m15a]

You must be playing a different game from me. Lategame health management with any thing above 4 cities is impossible without Prosperity. Allt he helath buildings provide a fraction of what Eudaimonia provides.

Nope, not impossible. Played 7 cities taking industry and knowledge and had +30 health around turn 150. (Soyuz level.) Would have had larger cities with prosperity, but whether that's important is debatable since the other trees compensate for smaller pops (science bonuses and building bonuses).

But the max number of healthy cities is probably way higher with prosperity.

EDIT: BTW, that 7 city game was with no biowells. Just lots and lots of buildings.

 

[tharg]

I don't like starting Prosperity either. Until trade routes get changed, its difficult to argue against prosperity being the best start in any competitive situation.

However my preference is to start with the right hand of the knowledge tree just to reduce city and trade route micromanagement. Except with an Apollo game where I think I would go for Prosperity tree anyway, just to give myself the best chance.

 

[Acken]

That is very interesting. I was always under the impression that these penalties would make a real big difference.

Colony with 8 cities = +24% cost on tech, +48% cost on virtue
Colony with 30 cities = 90% cost on tech, +180% cost on virtue

Difference is about 65% cheaper tech and 52% cheaper virtue. Looks like I've been worrying too much about this penalty. It's a significant amount, but it doesn't feel enough to counter the benefits of a wide colony.

If you're in game and trying to calculate how much science/culture a new city must provide to be worth it as a percentage of your CURRENT output the maths are pretty easy to figure out.

The time it takes you to get a new tech is T = C / P where C is current cost and P is current bpt.

So if C is increased by (1+i), P must also increase by (1+i) for T to remain the same.

Therefore how much is i ?

If base cost is C_0 then current cost is C_0 * (1+0.05*N)=C where N is your current number of cities. After a new city the cost become C_0 * (1+0.05*(N+1))=C(1+i).

We can conclude that a new city must provide (1+0.05(N+1)) / (1+0.05 N) - 1 of current bpt to be worth it. It's the same formula with 0.1 instead for culture.

 

[Soffacet]

Oh I wasn't worried about health, but rather about the number-of-city penalties to virtue acquisition.

REX means more expensive techs and virtues, which means it's a lot more difficult to get Networked Datalinks and Memeweb unless we start Knowledge. Slower tech also means it takes longer (or we'd have to beeline) to get the culture buildings.

Well, theoretically, anyway. I actually don't know the exact penalties so maybe it isn't that harsh, and not REX-ing actually doesn't help much with virtue acquisition anyway?

BE has the same penalties for culture reqs per city as BNW did, but it does not serve as a disincentive against continued expansion because culture generation in BE is city-based rather than capital-centric. In BNW you could get a Monument in every city but for a very long time all of your culture beyond that had to come from either guilds or city states. So building new cities actually would slow down your policies until much later in the game.

But in BE, there are a wide variety of per-city culture sources. Each new city only needs to generate 10% of your previous CPT in order to break even with the penalty, and this is quite easy in BE. For example, a new city with just Artist/OER/Preserve (+7 CPT) will accelerate, not slow, policy acquisition as long as your CPT without it would be < 70.

You must be playing a different game from me. Lategame health management with any thing above 4 cities is impossible without Prosperity. Allt he helath buildings provide a fraction of what Eudaimonia provides.

Sorry, this is incorrect. I haven't gone past T1 in prosperity for several games now, expand to at least ten cities, and I have Utopian state by t200. Eudaimonia is certainly the best health policy but some combination of Profiteering, Magnasanti, Biowell, Comunity Medicine, Cyto/Clinic/Pharma/BioLab/GGarden/Smelter/Distillery/PGarden/Surgury etc will more than suffice.

 

[Adjuvant]

This is what I think after winning 4 games on soyuz various ways and once on apollo, with less mentionable wins at lower difficulties.

With the state of the game as it is, there's no real reason to have more than 5 cities on any size map, unless you just feel like it. 5 is even overkill really. Look at it like this. Most games will last 240 turns max. Time and resources spent toward colonist, military expansion and protection, and the health hit/number of city various penalties, is better spent other ways toward victory. That said, I've found prosperity to be overkill. In bang-for-the-buck over time, you get the best mileage from industry and might, depending on victory intent.

Also there's no real reason to have a city size much over 15 in end game. 12-14 is optimal, because think about it, most of your income doesn't come from tiles or specialists proportionately, but from trade routes. Size 6 city is a solid city early on, size 8 or 9 is relatively just as contributory to your empire as a 12, and by 16 you're paying more time and money into health and food, just to feed people, than the benefit you'd have had making or buying military at size 12. Health doesn't matter much? Another great reason to not take prosperity because the second best 2nd tier is +7 health. By that time I could have had martial meditation (+1 affinity might), independence network (+25% interior trade route yield industry), or a solid lead on a flushed 2nd tier knowledge free tech, as anticipated springboard, plus everything that came before.

Knowledge is like a secondary to industry or might, so like open industry, go might or knowledge, or open might, go industry or knowledge. Further, most games I play I don't even reach 3rd tier virtues or even come close to fleshing out second, so nothing past that even matters.

I'm not going to tell anyone how to play. You can go sputnik level and ics 12 cities if you like it, that's cool. I personally don't even like prosperity and won't use it.

edit : added "and food just to feed people".

 

[Aeson]

Winning with a few cities or a lot of cities is easy. VCs are all cheese. The real difficulty in the game is self-imposed by challenging yourself to do something specific, and see how well/fast you can accomplish it.

Like conquer the world and simultaneously (same turn, even though only one will actually count) trigger all victory conditions (and not the cheesy capital sniping Domination, real Domination). This is the ultimate "win" in Civ games. See how fast you can accomplish that. Or max the score. Or get X victory condition as fast as possible.

Then the game becomes interesting and choices matter ... and there's more than one right way to play the game.

 

[Acken]

But in BE, there are a wide variety of per-city culture sources. Each new city only needs to generate 10% of your previous CPT in order to break even with the penalty, and this is quite easy in BE.

It's not even 10% actually, see my post.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Winning with a few cities or a lot of cities is easy. VCs are all cheese. The real difficulty in the game is self-imposed by challenging yourself to do something specific, and see how well/fast you can accomplish it.

Careful, the last time I tried to tell somebody that (about a Civ game), I was accused of blasphemy.

 

[mnf]

Interesting. Now I recall I usually slack on the culture buildings. I don't even build the alien preserve in most new cities.

I'm still starting with prosperity because that extra 3 expedition for explorers is just amazing when you pair it with 30 science from expeditions. This is almost like my fixed routine now. Pathfinders -> Field Research.

One question for people who prefer to go tall: what exactly do you mean by going tall? Say by turn 150, do you have like only 3 cities, or would you still be already having 5-8 cities?

What is going wide? 8-10 cities by turn 150, or basically don't stop until there's no more land? If you never stop, do you just keep building all the culture building in your new cities because otherwise you'll never get your next virtue?

 

[m15a]

Self imposed challenges? bah! Next thing, you're going to tell me people are trying to win with 1 city and no units ever leaving the capital. ;-)

 

[mnf]

Self imposed challenges? bah! Next thing, you're going to tell me people are trying to win with 1 city and no units ever leaving the capital. ;-)

Do trade convoys and spies count?

 

[Empedocles]

I prefer going with might or industry. Since everyone else double rexes, 2-3 soldiers and 2 policies will earn you a free colony or two. Add a couple of rangers and you can get a free capital, too. The rexing doesn't pay off until the colony matures, so that is when you hit them.

I've also found pure industry to be a strong start. You fall behind early, because you need to hard build or buy your first settler. However, you catch up in a huge way in the mid game. Getting the +25% internal trade routes policy early is a massive boost to your economy. With all the production bonus to buildings, you can get your new cities up and running quickly without needing any incoming trade routes, allowing you to concentrate all of your trade on upper best 3 cities to make them far stronger than a prosperity capital. In my last game, I found that the industry health policies were plenty to get to +20 health soon after I filled up all the available space. With 10 cities, I was pumping out 4-5 military units per turn with all buildings finished in every city. I eventually lost toa might player becauseI didn't have enough affinity points, but all the prosperity players were long dead by then, but all the prosperity players were dead or irrelevant by then.

 

[bhavv]

Ok you want a self imposed challenge ... Play without prosperity then!

 

[Aeson]

The power of Colony Initiative is you can REX without much in the way of a tradeoff militarily. If your second City is built with Culture your military numbers are potentially greater than even a might start. That is because the production into the Colonist can be put into military units instead. In that timeframe that is even more production than Military Industrial Complex would give ...

Just because some players are completely ignoring military and letting themselves get caught with their pants down doesnt make the Virtue bad.

Your Outposts will also become cities faster, minimizing your exposure.

 

[bhavv]

You don't need military at all that early in the game.