An update from Firaxis Games regarding Beyond Earth feedback

[Roxlimn]

Senethro:

With Civ3, new cities are always profitable nearly immediately because the corruption mechanic didn't penalize you so much as reduce the new city's output. For the majority of the time, that output was still almost always immediately positive. That was how, in Civ3, you could realistically create an empire that owned every tile in the world.

New cities being relevant is actually a classic Civ problem. The problem was that new cities founded later into the game needed so much growth and infrastructure that it was often better to attack and take enemy cities than it was to grow your own. CivBE's Trade Routes are both a new economic system and attempt to solve that problem.

Any Health constraint that impacts the TRs directly will have a chilling effect on limitless expansion precisely because of how influential they currently are. A 100% reduction is a demonstration of how serious that effect could be.

In Civ4, you could conquer yourself into so great of a hole that your units start disbanding and you couldn't get yourself out of it. If that's supposed to be a good thing, then I don't see how a similar effect can't be good here.

Acken:

Also please explain why a snow city is useless in current civBE (in general).

It's relatively useless compared to a size 16 city outputing over a hundred beakers plus energy and culture. The TRs would be, of course, of equal power between the cities, so that's a wash in this comparison.

 

[Acken]

It's relatively useless compared to a size 16 city outputing over a hundred beakers plus energy and culture. The TRs would be, of course, of equal power between the cities, so that's a wash in this comparison.

2 External TR there would yield somewhere between 15 and 20 science and gold. And more after some time powered by a TR from a stronger city (to get a bit of pop and buildings going).

Hardly that useless.

But it's a bit of a stupid example anyway, it's rare to run out of so much space that you need to settle in the snow. The game is over by turn 170-180 anyway.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Illustration: If TRs got a 100% reduction in output from being a -1 Health, you'd see a rapid decline in REXing for TRs pretty much immediately.

I make that suggestion once. Tying trade routes to health. The logic being that people are less willing to share when they are panicked and more likely to horde. And international trade due to profiteers taking advantage of your citizens at their most vulnerable.

 

[Senethro]

New cities being relevant is actually a classic Civ problem. The problem was that new cities founded later into the game needed so much growth and infrastructure that it was often better to attack and take enemy cities than it was to grow your own.

I see this "problem" as a good thing. It was both a merciful upper limit on the micromanagement and signaled a new phase of the game with either some fast wars or a long slow arms race.

CivBE's Trade Routes are both a new economic system and attempt to solve that problem.

I doubt it. I suspect it was more of an accident that they became so significant.

Any Health constraint that impacts the TRs directly will have a chilling effect on limitless expansion precisely because of how influential they currently are. A 100% reduction is a demonstration of how serious that effect could be.

And demonstrates the value behind Firaxis methods of testing and iteration. Its easy to make a suggestion but the first one to pop into your head isn't always the best.

In Civ4, you could conquer yourself into so great of a hole that your units start disbanding and you couldn't get yourself out of it. If that's supposed to be a good thing, then I don't see how a similar effect can't be good here.

Civ 4 gave you fair warning. Most people took notice when forced beneath 50% beakers and had either a good idea what they were doing or were about to learn a hard lesson. Your offhand suggestion could flip much more wildly between profitable and catastrophic states.

 

[Roxlimn]

It even makes sense thematically from how Health is tied to morale. -1 to -9 is described as Shaky. Below -10 is Troubled, I believe. -20 or below is Panicked.

Here's how I would arrange those:

Shaky -20% Science, -10% Culture, -25% Trade Route Output.

Troubled -10% Production, -50% Science, +100 Intrigue for hostile Cover Ops, -50% City Growth

Panicked -80% Science, -50% Output Growth, -80% City Growth

Key are additional Growth, TR, and much harsher Science penalties. The descriptors for the Health states go on about "freeing your thinkers to do things other than survive." That speaks to me of Science. If you're in negative Health, your scientists are increasingly doing subsistence work rather than working your Labs and Clincs.

Technically, I'd call for harsh Culture penalties as well, but I want to leave that open as a possible way to dig yourself out of a Health hole by focusing your Cities on Social Development.

This is even consistent with previous Civ3 and Civ4 plays - expensive expansions or moves of that nature often called for diverting more of your budget into economy rather than Science, often slowing Scientific advancement to a standstill. Harsh Science penalties is kind of a throwback to that concept.

Senethro:

Don't get hung up on the proposal. It was intentionally blunt and excessive to prove a point. It wasn't supposed to be a good mechanic in itself.

 

[GhostSalsa]

I think we already hashed that out in the Trade Routes thread. No need to repeat all that here and clog the thread.

I'm sure anyone could have guessed what would happen if you interjected your "this is the new economy, I find it enjoyable so everyone else hating it must just not realize how cool it is" vision into a new thread - and here we are, three pages later, being further edified on how buildings are actually still very relavent because they sometimes slightly adjust already superfluous route yields in an empire that has nothing left to do on turn 150. Wow, the thread is derailed - how could this happen? It must have been the trade route haters.

Moderator Action: Please keep the focus on the topic and not other posters and in particular make your point without calling other posters "trade route haters".
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Ryoga]

Both system work hand in hand to make expanding the primary strategy. However yes if instead of removing TR you make un-health so undesirable that the penalty isn't worth the gain acquired by a new city and TR then yes this is the other side of the coin in how to make expanding less strong.

I personally hope they come down on both systems. If they only make unhealth bad it really doesn't fix much (and I'd have to see what they really consider doing there). It will just make expansion slower, you'll still end up with 20-30 trade routes at the end of your now slower game. This is a matter of opinion here but I dislike having to manage that many, it's just a boring task. Also it would make +health type virtues even stronger than it is right now since the new goal would simply to spam while achieving health balance.

I'm actually fine if Civ BE is a game that allows limitless expansion without many constraints as it was with SMAC, but I'd rather that to happen because of mechanics that make positive health easily attainable and not because of irrelevant penalties for negative health.

The main problem currently is that while the player can understand that -40 health is a minor issue if you spam trade routes, the AI do not. The AI are substantially still anchored to the system of Civ V where keeping a positive value of happiness is crucial.

Either reprogram the AI so that they will go for ruthless expansionism or fix the health system so that negative health will actually cause serious development stunts.

Again: Uhhhh, no? In some patches and times in Civ3/4 it was quite possible to expand yourself into a hole. The concept behind Health isn't new. Efficiency, Corruption, City Maintenance etc. Its just all dependent on the strength of the constraint on expansion and sometimes it has been wicked strong. Its a difficult thing to get right, seems to get fiddled with in many patches and yet somehow its always part of Firaxis 33% of a game thats either changed or new.

The way I see it in Civ 3 and SMAC the Efficiency system was just there to tone down the obvious advantage of having a larger empire, so that the increased benefits instead of being linearly additive they had a diminishing return. However there was never a real reason to stop expanding, you just knew that the next city wouldn't be as much as useful as the previous, but still an improvement.

 

[Yzman]

I think one easy quick fix (but my no means the only fix required) would be to not allow more colonists to be built once you are in the -10 health range. It makes sense really.

 

[Ryoga]

I think one easy quick fix (but my no means the only fix required) would be to not allow more colonists to be built once you are in the -10 health range. It makes sense really.

That still would halt normal expansion but not a domination spree. Civ V nailed it right by making units increasingly less powerful and causing barbarians to spawn.

I'd also rather change that into "cannot found cities" else someone might get around the issue by building 10 colonists and then making them settle all at once.

 

[Acken]

I'm actually fine if Civ BE is a game that allows limitless expansion without many constraints as it was with SMAC, but I'd rather that to happen because of mechanics that make positive health easily attainable and not because of irrelevant penalties for negative health.

The main problem currently is that while the player can understand that -40 health is a minor issue if you spam trade routes, the AI do not. The AI are substantially still anchored to the system of Civ V where keeping a positive value of happiness is crucial.

My problem isn't really with expanding. Though I do believe it should be a careful endeavor rather than a mindless goal. My issue is with expanding fast and tight, and the fact that almost all places are worth settling especially coastal ones. The main limitation to settling being the fact that the game is so short with lvl 13 affinities being reachable in the 160-180 area (and since the AI is passive, it's a guaranteed win at that point).

In Civ5 it was very important to pick your sites carefully because you had a lot of stuff to consider. The problem it had was that it was punishing late expansion and wide way too harshly. Here it's just the extreme opposite, it's "whatever, if city sucks trade route will even be better ", let's just make loans left and right so that I can rushbuy settlers. This is just out of whack. And as I said earlier both harsher health and a diminution of TR numbers has to happen in my opinion. And while you're at it make the damn AI opportunist so that players don't have such an easy way settling half the continent with no army.

 

[Roxlimn]

Acken:

In Civ5 it was very important to pick your sites carefully because you had a lot of stuff to consider. The problem it had was that it was punishing late expansion and wide way too harshly. Here it's just the extreme opposite, it's "whatever, if city sucks trade route will even be better."

That's a complete mistake people jumped to because they didn't understand differential yield and logarithmic scaling. There's no reason a size 16 city couldn't have comparable Trade Route power with a sucky size 1 city. I know this from having done it in-game - the TRs from the size 16 one and the size 1 one were nearly identical.

There is no advantage to having a suckier city - you just get shafted.

 

[War_Pig]

Acken:



That's a complete mistake people jumped to because they didn't understand differential yield and logarithmic scaling. There's no reason a size 16 city couldn't have comparable Trade Route power with a sucky size 1 city. I know this from having done it in-game - the TRs from the size 16 one and the size 1 one were nearly identical.

There is no advantage to having a suckier city - you just get shafted.

It has nothing to do with the size of the population. It goes off of food surplus. If you have a city that's small (in snow) it is vary easy to keep it at food surplus 0. Same for hammers (nuts) for that matter. Then when you send a route to your main food city that has 20+ food surplus the trade route will be insane. The big kicker here is that your main city will be getting a huge boost from this route too (How does that work).

This leads to a snowball effect if you think on a bigger scale when you now add you have 5 snow cities all adding to your main city making it's surplus even bigger which leads to a bigger gap in the trade difference which leads to a better trade boost which leads to a bigger gap which....

All by having 5 cities in the snow supplying food to your cap.???? how does that work.

 

[Roxlimn]

Tile yields, cities, and Trade Routes are all abstractions. At the level of granularity we have in CivBE, there are any number of ways that can work out if you think about it.

 

[Acken]

That's a complete mistake people jumped to because they didn't understand differential yield and logarithmic scaling. There's no reason a size 16 city couldn't have comparable Trade Route power with a sucky size 1 city. I know this from having done it in-game - the TRs from the size 16 one and the size 1 one were nearly identical.

There is no advantage to having a suckier city - you just get shafted.

No idea what you're trying to say here.

This isn't a mis-comprehension of the maths behind it, its just bad design (in my opinion). I really have no idea why you just repeat over and over that the problem is people not understanding the system as if it's a justification.

 

[Roxlimn]

I don't know whether it's a justification or not, but cities sucking don't make Trade Routes better. That's a mistake. I'm pointing it out. It just makes the city suck. It can stand to be more transparent.

 

[Aeson]

The best trade routes are from cities which have little Production|Food to/from those which have lots of Production|Food.

So to max Trade Route yield (ignoring all other factors) you would want 3 really good coastal cities, and everything else packed together with coastal placements being given priority.

But when considering all other factors, Tech and Virtue rate will be faster with ~20-30 really good cities. At some point, adding more cities for Trade Routes becomes a net negative in regards to Science and Culture, because it raises the costs by a larger % of total than the city output represents. This number is actually lower for crappy cities when there are some good cities, as the crappy cities already represent a lower % of total output due to their nature.

More is always better in regards to Production numbers. But Production isn't a limiting factor in most cases. Useful number of Units are limited by 1UPT and resources.

 

[Acken]

I don't know whether it's a justification or not, but cities sucking don't make Trade Routes better. That's a mistake. I'm pointing it out. It just makes the city suck. It can stand to be more transparent.

It doesn't make the trade route "better" but the route compensates for the lack of food or hammers (not linearly whatever). Making a bad city still profitable because that city will still be able to get its own routes in due time which is the only thing that matter in this game. A better city spot makes for a better city, nobody argues against that . What is being argued is that crazy routes makes any land at least profitable therefore you just spam spam spam to raise your bpt through more and more routes and pop/academies.

Your only true restraint right now is time because after some time you're so close to the end that it doesn't matter any more. And that end time comes very fast in that game, like T130.

 

[Selereth]

Your only true restraint right now is time because after some time you're so close to the end that it doesn't matter any more. And that end time comes very fast in that game, like T130.

Welll, if you're a pro and know the game's ins and outs, then yeah, I guess you could win by turn 130 on quick speed.

 

[Acken]

Welll, if you're a pro and know the game's ins and outs, then yeah, I guess you could win by turn 130 on quick speed.

Nah I didn't mean to win on turn 130. But the point where you're already close to lvl13 in afinity, it takes another 30-35 after that.

Standard speed.

 

[Roxlimn]

The only true restraints in any Civ game for the profitability of expansion are the restraint mechanic and time. This is true in Civ IV, V, and all the prior ones. In fact, the restraints were less in SMAC, where ICS originated.

Power tiles dictating the profitability of any city was only really true in Civ IV, and only before you get strong Corporations. After you get those, you can settle a 1 tile city in the middle of the Ocean with no profitable tiles and you'd still get somewhere.

I don't view strong site restriction as a good thing. CivBE strongly argues against this, not with Trade Routes, but with its buildings and tile improvements. Vivarium makes any Desert tile equitable, and many better than average. Academies, Manufactories, Biowells, and really all the maintenance improvements can be built anywhere there's land - so there's a very strong vein of "we can settle anywhere" vibe in the game irrespective of the Trade Routes. In fact, you can rein it back to CiV routes and it'd be mostly the same, since the food output was even better there (not dependent on differential), and you can maintain the city on building food when it's not on TR food.

This is not a problem, and I see this as completely and absolutely within the intent of the design. After all, the theme is settling and taming hostile worlds. You can't communicate that theme with mechanics that restrict settling.