Are the Penalties of Going wide and going to war too much?

[danaphanous]

This is an old topic, often hashed out by the community, but after learning about the local happiness cap (I knew the numbers didn't add up on my wide games!) I'm annoyed again and wanted to talk about this.

I'm aware that the devs wanted civ V to be a game where focusing small or expanding rapidly both work but as many others have commented I fear that going wide is now actively punished in an arbitrary way and a result civ V is less fun in some ways for me. Playing small and building loads of buildings and growing tall was fun for a few games, but NOT as fun as my expansion, religious, and warring games. It's basically just a click to the end sort of game with little excitement for me.

But, the actions that result in more uncertainty and fun: (war and expansion) are both punished terribly in civ V. I have to wonder what their goal was in making two of the most fun facets of the civ series so much harder to do effectively. I love Civ V and a lot of the changes it introduced (religion, ideologies, social policy, tourism, 1 UPT) but this continues to annoy me and I've played countless hours with weird experimental games to find strategies that got around the penalties so I could REX like the old days. If they had even allowed a slider in setup that allowed you to set the penalties that would have been great and allowed players to play as they wished, but they locked it behind the scenes so the only recourse is mods. As a result the most boring way to play: (Tall/Tradition) is the most competitive.

Here is a list of my top most annoying/arbitrary features and why I think they just detract from the fun of this game and how I think they could've been done better.

1. Global Happiness: Civ V moved to a global happiness system. As a result many nonintuitive things happen. Now settling/acquiring a new city can suddenly lurch your entire empire into unhappiness, esp. on small maps.

Spoiler :

Warring can only be done with a big buffer of happiness as a result because not only does conquering a city add the extra city penalty but also an occupation penalty and a resistance penalty in the beginning. We've played the game for so long we've gotten used to this but I see new players complain about it all the time. It's nonintuitive and unexpected, and it's bad game design. Why should dissenters over in a city I just conquered make my entire prosperous empire unhappy? Civ IV's system was far superior in my opinion with happiness for each city independent, the game desperately needs to return to this if warfare is ever going to be fun/fair/intuitive again. Because of these problems the new domination victory requires only capitals because you'd get too unhappy otherwise and many players burn all but the capitals to keep happy. Forcing players to burn nice cities is sad and unrealistic in my opinion, but worse is the capital rule for domination. it means on small maps I can snipe 3 capitals in a few turns and win without really taking someone down. It creates a cheap way to win without really winning, esp. with nukes and planes. I really think puppeted cities should not add to the global unhappiness pool but just affect themselves as they aren't really a part of the empire. The question is: well what limits players from conquering the whole world then? Something should I guess, but tanking -15 unhappiness every city I take is not an acceptable substitute. As annoying as they were I liked war weariness and corruption far better. What really is supposed to stop a warmonger is other nations banding together and the subjugated populations resisting. As you conquer more and more you have to leave troops behind to keep rebellion from happening meaning less on the front lines and more maintenance costs. Also, ideally the AI's war skills need to be improved and they need to unite against an aggressor that is clearly taking them out one by one and actually go offensive rather then defending. It is hard to protect a sprawling empire so I think this should work well in forcing a warmonger to sue for peace, at least for a time.

2. Local Happiness Cap: As if the above wasn't enough they had to complicate it even further by making it so that a local city can't produce more happiness then it's population creates unhappiness. This is called the local happiness cap. So the devs are saying they want a global happiness system, but then making it local for the purposes of happiness generation (a few sources are global like luxes/wonders). This sounds fair until your realize this means no city can EVER overcome the happiness it produces. Because cities generate unhappiness based off population AND by increasing the "number of cities" and you can't undo the number of cities unhappiness.

Spoiler :

So every city you found adds more and more unhappiness that it's buildings can't undo. Exception to this is India, however they nerfed the happiness cap with them too to 67% of a citizen, so you only break even at super-high population so hardly helpful. So going wide can't happen without more and more outside happiness sources like luxuries or mercantile CS which are finite. The result is on a large map you have to leave vast amounts of land unsettled purely for the abitrary reason that there is not another luxury over there. This is what they wanted I guess, but it's both arbitrary and not that fun to play. Settling, expanding, and war are some of the most fun parts of the games for many players and they have been made very formulaic and short by this system. Conquering the world is hardly as fun in Civ V when you had to burn 2/3 of it to pull it off. I personally think the local happiness cap should offset both the population and the settling penalty. Only then will it be fair. There is still a penalty that way but at least it isn't permanently limiting expansion. It would make it so if you keep on top of your happiness buildings you can keep growing. As it is now you can build every happiness building and have enough to stay positive but you'll still be negative due to that unhappiness from number of cities.

3. The city number penalties to science and culture and national wonders. If the above 2 were the only penalties there'd still be a few competitive edges to goign wide. You'd be struggling with happiness and growth but at least you'd have the option to generate more culture, grow a bigger/stronger religion, have a greater total production capacity, and generate a lot of science and innovation from the many people in your empire. This is realistic to history. The large empires did well at all these things. But the devs though this was unfair too so they introduced the science and culture penalties for going wide. Every city beyond your capital makes every tech cost 5% more and every social policy cost 10% more after the next one is reached. And you can't undo it by selling/burning cities (the ratchet system). Also national wonders get more expensive to make, as if building them wasn't hard enough in a wide ever-expanding empire

Spoiler :

The effect is that you can actually make less social progress and do WORSE in science by having more people and a bigger empire. It can be overcome but it requires you to get your buildings up VERY quick and grow very fast, which is not very feasible being nerfed already by happiness and having less money. Many games if there was just more happiness to be got somewhere I could grow my new cities rapidly enough to overcome these penalties but I find there is absolutely no happiness left anywhere to acquire in the entire world. I think these penalties would be ok to work around and be balanced if either 1 or 2 was not a factor but with all 3, just as they wanted I guess, you cannot expand smoothly in civ V. You will eventually hit a wall of pain and have to stop regardless of if there is more land to settle nearby.

A few changes would have made this more balanced. If they had:
1. made local city happiness include the number of city happiness so cities could offset that with their buildings.
2. provided more global happiness sources beyond wonders, CS, and luxuries
3. made puppeted cities not add to the global unhappiness but only affect themselves like they do for the science/culture penalties

Civ V, would be way, way more fun for me.

We've lived with these rules so long with civ V we've gotten used to them but I posit that they are not only making civ V less fun than previous iterations but limiting player creativity as well. I try my best to mix up my games and try alternate strategies and it's enough to win on immortal level with semi-large empires (10-13 cities) but one I can never try is a very large empire due to these rules. There is a finite amount of global happiness sources in the world and when I get all I can I cannot make more cities. I'm aware the penalties are a bit less on low levels of play but the AI is just so bad at those levels I really can't play below emperor without it being a disappointing game. It doesn't help also that one of the major sources of global happiness: Mercantile City States, is unstable and is constantly being fought over with the AI. It's a bit naive to expect to keep all the city states or rely on them in your plans for a Deity game for instance, hence I really think there needs to be another source of permanent global happiness.

Does anyone agree with me? If so what do you do now that you're bored of tall games and yearning for a truly wide game like we could play in Civ IV? I can get up to around 13 cities usually but that is the max and it requires frequent periods where I have to stop growth all over my empire. I play this on immortal and it usually wins me the game but it is a bit tedious with the 3 rules limited wide play. Are there any mods you can recommend because I am sick of above three vanilla BNW rules that are severely hampering my creativity.

UDPATE AND EDITS!!!

Thanks so much everyone for your feedback/opinions and strategies on this thread! Talking with you guys and researching I've learned a lot. I still think the above 3 things at the same time are a little over the top but I now know how to better REX and expand systematically. I'll share some of what I know now for future players summarized here:

I think I've found settings/playstyle that are quite competitive in the REX way I wish to play regardless of difficulty level. Here's what I've discovered, correct me if any of this is wrong:

1. Play on Huge for the best REX game: Not only does the world have every luxury available the penalties per city are much smaller and the AI runs out of steam giving you space to expand for a long time. Reduced penalties are: Culture: 7% penalty per city (means your policy costs double after 14 cities and triple after 29) I find early game with one RB and fast monuments there is almost no slowdown if timed right, Science: 3% (science costs double after 33 cities - easy to manage), unhappiness: 1.8 added per new city.

2. Get a religion with happiness buffs: On immortal RB's may be hard to score but usually something is left like +2 happiness from gardens or temples. Both are very nice and passive way to get earlier local happiness and grow your cities 2 population taller. If a neighbor has even more happiness/culture options in their religion it may be advantageous to let it spread through your empire a while but nothing gets you the benifits faster than founding your own. Also the ceremonial burial and peace-loving founder beliefs are GLOBAL happiness. (This is BIG!) So though it looks weak it bypasses the local happiness cap in cities and directly combats things like city settling penalties allowing every extra smiley to mean more cities!

3. Go liberty and get to meritocracy as quick as possible: Happiness from city connections is a seperate category and I believe from my observations it is AGAIN one of the rare sources of GLOBAL happiness, bypassing the local city cap. You can think of it as transforming that 1.8 unhappiness per founded city to 0.8! That means every unique luxury supports the settling penalty of 5 cities! That's a lot! The -5% unhappiness from citizens in non-occupied is small but it does add up as it is also global and across the board. The effect makes it so that after 20 population a city + city connection bonus a city can actually overcome its settling cost and be purely happiness neutral! (India can do it earlier) Also, make sure to get the early Pyramids. The free workers and faster working will much more quickly connect your empire activating the city connection bonuses and meritocracy. And the GE point often translates into a free Renaissance wonder that may have even more happiness effects!

4. Now that you've minimized the global settling penalties, limit growth and only let cities grow as much as they can support locally in happiness : Exception maybe the capital to keep it competitive and generate good science/trade routes. You can consume the base happiness and a few luxes to keep it growing. Now that every city only has a base unhappiness of 0.8 plus global -5% reduction for population that local happiness cap is not so bad. Production-focus them and avoid growth until you build the circus, a religious building, colosseum, etc. and let it grow by the amount of new happiness each time you finish it. This means you are never wasting happiness with the local cap. This is where different civs or a religion really shine. Any with extra early happiness buildings means every city can grow that much taller. Celts for instance, I find can keep growing very, very well and get taller cities quite quickly that stay neutral.

5. Find and at least befriend mercantile CS (usually pretty easy): Focus on friending all the ones you know as priority. Each one gives +3 happiness to your GLOBAL happiness meaning an additional 4 cities almost. And keeping friend status is a lot easier and more certain then ally status. But, if they ask for a lucky quest being friends can easily mean you jump up to ally and mercantile CS contain 1 unique luxury and often a 2nd as well. It can make a HUGE difference, though don't rely on keeping more than 1 mercantile ally in the beginning as it is an uncertain source of happiness.

6. Forget rationalism, make commerce your second priority: Commerce fixes the lack of early gold problem that the liberty tree has and gets you a lot more gold for your wide empire. This means cash-buying loads of infrastructure, keeping CS allies, etc! It will help a lot in science by giving science from trading posts and allowing you to instantly cash-buy many science buildings to keep up so it makes a nice 2nd choice for science behind rationalism as well. If you get to the end it also transforms every unique lux you have into 6 happiness (50% more) meaning your empire can grow even wider or start to grow tall at this point.

7. Hit or miss, but finding the Natural wonders early means an extra 1 global happiness each which covers the settling penalties of 1 new city each time. If you can score them in-borders several generate happiness just by being in your territory. I never really prioritized exploring or finding them as the effect seemed small but on huge/wide it can make a difference finding them early and there are a LOT in the world!

8. It can be hard to ensure you take them on high difficulties but certain wonders are very nice. Any that provide happiness are global sources, which directly support more cities. A favorite of many wide players is Notre Dame with the highest bonus happiness in the game. AI beeline it on immortal and higher but if timed properly your Great Engineer from the pyramids might take it for free. Another amazing wonder for wide is the Forbidden Palace. It can be huge, reducing unhappiness -10% across the board. With meritocracy you're now talking a global -15% reduction which means cities can overcome the settling penalties and be happiness neutral and supporting yourself in happiness in every city by population 6-7. If you get both I imagine you could literally ICS forever like the old days but I've never managed it on immortal yet. Will try next game! If you get through liberty fast and are not yet medieval opening patronage to build this wonder and get a reduced -25% decay in CS friends/allies can really help. If nothing else that reduced rate gives you the edge in keeping allies and friends.

9. Ideologies hit after this meaning loads of local happiness sources: After commerce the timing should be just about perfect to open ideologies. All of them immediately give a lot more local happiness meaning your entire empire can start to grow tall. Order has many local happiness sources and is my choice for a peaceful commercial wide empire. Go autocracy if you are warring frequently at this point as it has the same, if not more sources if you are capturing cities. Either way your wide, powerful empire is now free to grow into a monster of production, science, and culture. Have not tested, but the 1/2 unhappiness from specialists may beat the local happiness cap. I'm not sure. If it does, this means every specialist needs only 0.5 happiness meaning you can again, possibly generate more happiness then could otherwise be supported locally and export it to other cities. As in wide empires the cities are more crowded they are often running specialists by pop 10 or so so it could work. It all depends on if that happiness beats the local cap. If it doesn't it will still help your empire grow tall though.

Civs good at this strategy:

Rome: going wide with Rome is very nice. They don't directly help with happiness but legions can duel as defense/deterrance, early warring, and road-build to take the pressure off your workers. Due to the 25% reduction in cost for buildings in Rome the nation is perfect for easily getting every happiness building along the way quickly without distracting from other infrastructure. All in all you can build a strong wide empire much faster with them and it is even better if they have ivory/horses/stone near the capital as you'll get the circus/stone-works/stable discounts forever after.

India: A fairly well-known fact. India doubles city founding penalties but halves population penalty. On huge map this means 3.6 unhappiness base (2.6 after meritocracy). It may seem bad, but every city you make will grow nearly twice as tall. They are able to competitively keep up in science as a result. On huge they do very, very well as a result. They would be even more OP but their local city happiness cap is adjusted to 66% per citizen meaning that 1 local happiness doesn't directly translate into 2 citizens. However, I find their ability still enables some interesting things. The math says that due to their ability they can produce more happiness locally than population (16% more). As a result only they can produce enough happiness locally to overcome their higher settling penalty and eventually be happiness-neutral. Late-game this means they can have super-tall cities with no happiness hit at all meaning they can literally ICS forever.

Celts: One of my favorites. Their unique abilities ensure their pick of any religious beliefs. This means they can get RB's at any difficulty which enable them to grow taller. Their opera house also gives an extra +3 happiness meaning their cities will be growing at least 3 taller midgame (more if supported by religion).

There are probably more but those are my 3 favorite. Any religious civ or civ that gives extra happiness to early buildings is good at this.

 

[inthesomeday]

I think going wide is better because I mostly play multiplayer, where happiness issues are more easily countered and smaller maps lead to larger empires being more powerful relative to smaller ones. Liberty players get around 6-8 cities ideally while tradition players get 3-4-- and remember, this is a setting where happiness is much easier to counteract because the AI isn't able to ruin things-- and most cities edge off around 20 in terms of population, meaning more cities end up with better pop by the early modern regardless of tradition's growth bonus. Then liberty is better for production, and production is more significant than food mid to late game. Science ends up being better because more cities means more secular specialist slots. Science and production outweigh growth and border expansion, and tradition's happiness bonuses are rather less impactful on multiplayer.

 

[joncnunn]

Those three aren't actually what I see as the biggest problems (single player).

The biggest two are:

1. Game ends too quickly on standard speed with expert level play compared to Civ IV. (Not enough time for a new self founded city to pay for itself)

2. 100% requirement of X building for each national wonder (puppets excluded) instead of a fixed number.

In both cases, it's new self founded cities being punished more severely. In the case of a conquered city you'll keep 50% of the population (more in later game if you focused on tourism) + some of the buildings. And in addition you can choose the timing on when to annex to avoid interfering with national wonders.

 

[inthesomeday]

Well, playing wide there are realistically only two national wonders you actually prioritize, national college and circus maximus. National epic can be nice but isn't necessarily a priority; however, you'll usually prioritize monuments in new cities enough that national epics will be easily available fairly early anyway. East India is similar, it'll eventually get built anyway because markets are built quickly. Heroic epic can be nice, and this is maybe the only one that you could ever realistically want playing wide without managing to accidentally build it. Oxford is the same, and timing the tech is important, but much like national epic universities are high priority enough to be able to accumulate Oxford sort of by accident. Ironworks is the same.
I've always seen national wonders as a sort of consolation prize for tall players compared to wide players; the bonuses national wonders provide are pretty easily compensated for in sheer quantity by well built wide empires, and any of the national wonders that are useful on wide play really aren't that hard to come across due to the typically prioritized buildings.

 

[danaphanous]

Those three aren't actually what I see as the biggest problems (single player).

The biggest two are:

1. Game ends too quickly on standard speed with expert level play compared to Civ IV. (Not enough time for a new self founded city to pay for itself)

2. 100% requirement of X building for each national wonder (puppets excluded) instead of a fixed number.

yes I meant to comment on #2 and forgot too. The national wonder requirements are far more difficult going wide. However, I'm honestly more annoyed by the fact that the hammer cost gets so high. Why did they make them scale with number of cities? That decision makes no sense to me seeing it is already harder to get the requirements to even start building. Anyway, I focused on the things I saw as specifically punishing expansion that don't really even make sense as a game mechanic and seem arbitrary.

As far as game ending too quickly, I totally agree. What is yoru rationale for saying that? For me, it's because many of my wider games would really start to get good if more time was allowed for those newer cities to grow strong, despite all these penalties.nOnly my first 10 cities really make a difference. The others are often just a liability. The long bulb chain of scientists is a strange way to end the game too and it seems to me it ends it prematurely. Scientist bulb output should really be fixed with the time they were produced.

 

[inthesomeday]

I've always felt rapidly bulbing scientists made much more sense historically than inching through periods of technology that historically took much less time to get through. Regardless, going wide on a small size map will almost never yield ten cities built by you; those that you do build will typically be comparable in size to any tradition city, and will have far superior production. The tradeoff is mid game growth, early game border expansion, and tech and policy costs that are more than made up for with the advantages in production and science.

 

[x2Madda]

I agree to disagree with you on this but I come from a different angle.

Going wide is indeed heavily punished and as has been pointed out, capturing cities is almost universally better than settling a new city because of the time it will take a new city to catch up.

The problem before this was that every city is a fantastic investment and therefore if it wasn't for the handicaps, you would have 0 reason to not expand as much as possible, dropping city after city. We see this perfect mess in Civ:be for example, where instead of unhappiness we have unhealth.

If by some miracle, unhappiness is not an issue, national wonders also work to reign in wide vs tall which I rather like. A empire with 10 cities is always at a better advantage than a single super city because that super city can only focus one task at a time. A wide empire can target multiple wonders AND build military AND build utility units like trade caravans or archaeologists.

With nothing to keep the noose tight around wide empires, the only limiting factor is the player making a calculated choice; okay 7 cities is enough so now I should focus on other things, which again, we see in Civ:be.

I love going wide, I love building shrines in every city and settling on horses so I can build circuses for free and hope for first dibs on religion so that I can get happiness buildings. But its sub optimal play outside of warmongering (or sacred shrines) and while that seems to support your theory more than debunk it the truth is that tall vs wide is a very fine balance that is hard to, well, balance.

I think civ5 did a good job. I think tall is the best way to play, against the AI, while wide is the best way to play, against human players.

The fact that both styles can be viable is a great thing and while I say wide is sub optimal against the AI, which it is most of the time, that doesn't mean Liberty is rubbish in terms of social policies.

 

[inthesomeday]

I agree that single player usually favors tall; this is because the AI isn't very good at anything in particular besides spamming things, and when the AI is spamming things what you're meant to do is to avoid spamming things and instead focus on science growth, and eventually your science will outgrow their massive advantage from the start and you'll win your victory.
This is part of the reason I've stopped playing single player almost at all; one thing always happens, especially in higher levels, and it's build four cities and grow them huge and tech tech tech until you win; there's no customization and there's no room for diversion, you essentially are either going to win or lose by turn 50. Of course, I've never played deity, but I can at least speak to up to immortal.
I'm not one of these people that bashes on all things Civ V and says the AI is like cancer or whatever, I think it's perfectly fine and presents a fun opportunity to play mods and to try new things and learn new mechanics; I just think it's not as much fun because there's no human element beyond the simple programmable emotions of like Shaka and Monty. The easily exploitable programmable emotions.
In single player, wherein essentially the only factor determining human competitiveness is how quickly the human can grow their cities and therefore science to a level that surpasses the handicapped AI, and tradition's finisher helps with growth up until the point of stagnation. But even comparing them objectively, for example, on prince level, or in a game where all starts are equal, the bonuses offered by liberty are just superior, and the wider availability of resources-- here meaning tile yields-- provide a clear winner in my book. What is the best policy in tradition? Probably either monarchy or landed elite, three tiers down the tree and only helping growth-related issues and early game gold. What's the best policy in liberty? Republic, available right off the bat from tier one and relevant from the very first turn you take it until the very last turn of the game.
A tradition expand with a no maintenance monument from its first turn of existing provides +2 culture with some hard to remember factor in border expansion. A liberty expand with a 2 gold maintenance monument by its 5th turn of foundation provides 3 culture. This means it will take about 15 turns for the culture accumulation bonus from legalism to diminish, and after that there is no support for expands in tradition besides an aqueduct (another 5-7 turn building by the time you're actually needing it) in some of the cities and border growth that really shouldn't be noticeable or significant. And a 15% food bonus, which is nice for when you're still growing cities, meaning obsolete by the early modern.
You never stop using hammers, but eventually your cities stop growing.

 

[danaphanous]

nice to see contrasting opinions and you guys are right that war is the most effective way to acquire lategame cities. That's an off-topic but it's true. If you want late-game cities capturing them is the way to go.

I won't argue the current balance does great at nerfing wide play to the point both strategies are competitive. I don't think the current system is terrible. My point was just that some of the limitations of wide play seem arbitrary and counterintuitive to past civ and expected gameplay. Global Happiness is weird. A local happiness cap that doesn't even cover the cost of the city is even weirder, it's basically like programming in an unstoppable limiter to city number which I don't like as it doesn't feel realistic. I feel like all cities should have a chance to cover their own unhappiness cost, not be automatically limited to less. I have to wonder if there was a better way to do this that feels more historical and more real is all.

I play most of my games "wide" but by "wide" I mean 10 cities usually is the most I can manage without it hurting me too severely. This is a very small empire by my civ IV or III standards and I kind of miss having the ability to more effectively settle the land. I would be fine if those cities stayed even small and relatively unproductive, but it doesn't make sense that just creating a small new settlement should affect your global empire so much. You guys don't think it's weird that humans are unable/unwilling to fully settle the planet due to arbitrary things like global happiness? You can't really "fill in" your empire in civ V like in past iterations and war feels more like Blitzkrieg on capitals then a complete conquest of the enemy.This makes it less fun in some ways for me, and can be confusing for new players since the system is not as intuitive. You don't expect to tank 20 unhappiness after taking a city in war for instance. These are all things you learn that we've just gotten used too.

I still have a lot of fun with this game but it feels limited and shortsighted in some ways.

 

[Alleria]

I used to be a Tradition player and I now play Liberty. When I played Tradition, I always wondered why there were so many Ideologies dedicated to happiness. Sure, I wasn't swimming in luxuries, but I wasn't drowning with unhappiness either.

However, now that I'm playing late game liberty, I know why these ideologies are there. On my last game with Rome (Standard Speed, Fractal, Immortal), i finished the game with about 500 happiness/unhappiness, struggling all game long to get the slider not above 0, but above -10, and somtimes just even above -20.

I understand why they did this: balance. But your worst ennemy, the opponent that you want to defeat the most, being just a value (happiness) instead of the other IAs, this really feels unsatisfying.

 

[komodowaran]

idk why u guys have so big happynes problems with liberty
as long as u settle ondly one city per lux u should not have that big of problems at all
money is the ondly problem i got with liberty in the early game
the other problem with them is that they get a "free" great person that is not free

 

[gobbledydook]

Two cities per lux if you are going ICS.

 

[Kriogen]

Its so that wide is not the only viable option. It would be boring if the only option is to spam large number of cities.

The idea "balance wide vs tall" is good. Im not saying devs did it perfectly tho. Good direction, but could use extra polish.

Civ5 is moddable. Maybe I should make a mod? Or does it already exists (better balance wide/tall)?

 

[beetle]

I think civ5 did a good job.

I agree with this and love going wide too. As compared with previous iterations, I think V does the best job balancing the pros/cons of tall versus wide.

 

[danaphanous]

idk why u guys have so big happynes problems with liberty
as long as u settle ondly one city per lux u should not have that big of problems at all
money is the ondly problem i got with liberty in the early game
the other problem with them is that they get a "free" great person that is not free

one lux is enough if you play a large/huge map size as I've gravitated towards. But due to the fact that there are usually no more than 12 unique luxuries on a standard game in the world this limits the number of cities you can found dramatically. The reason, if you read my post, is that the devs made it so that the cities cannot produce more happiness then they produce via population. The problem with this is that every city produces not only the unhappiness of its own population but also a base unhappiness (3 on standard) just for increasing the number of cities. It means that you will always reach a point where you are unable to found more cities and thus ICS (infinite cities) is impossible. They could have made it hard or slow to expand or even have an opportunity cost, all those would be fair, but making a hard limit like this just seems weird to me--it means you can never play a bigger empire game. Happiness tenets from ideology are nice but almost all of them are local happiness meaning they never address this basic problem that each city can't produce more happiness then it takes away. The exception is luxuries, wonders, and the small bonus from mercantile CS. These affect your global happiness pool so that is why many wide players recommend settling near luxuries. However, this is kind of annoying compared to previous civ iterations. There may be many good city spots that don't necessarily have a new unique luxury so it introduces an arbitrary and unhistorical requirement for settling which I like less than previous civ.

it was a good first step toward making small and large empires competitive but I think the game needs to be fair and intuitive. This system is not intuitive is my main gripe. New players are always surprised and annoyed to find that this is how it really works.

When we say "wide" with civ V we're usualy talking no more than 12 cities due to the inherent hard limits I mention above. This might seem like a lot but it is a small empire by the standards of Civ IV or III and this is especially evident on a huge map where the human is unable to fill it in properly (though you can make a few more cities due to settling penalty being reduced, maybe max of 20 but you'd be struggling to keep positive happiness there). I would be in favor of reworking the system in a way that you can settle a bit more freely but those cities cannot be made powerful/effective as easily without it affecting the global pools. this way at least you don't get punished for every 1 population village you settle. Maybe once cities reach a size of 3 or so they begin costing the empire a "maintenance" in happiness and gold. I don't mind struggling with happiness but having it hit immediatley after settling or taking a city in war doesn't seem realistic. Not sure how this would affect the balance, but it would sure help with "filling in" the empire and claiming land. Not all cities have to be giant productive monsters and they aren't for real nations. They have towns too.

 

[danaphanous]

Question I just thought of though: does the freedom tenet of half-unhappiness from specialists not affect the local cap? If so you could beat it using that tenet. I've never tried a freedom and very wide game due to it mainly boosting large cities but if this is true I might have my next experiment I've found most ideology happiness tenets are local happiness thus cannot beat the number of cities penalty and just "catch you up" in local happiness.

If the freedom tenet works though I can conceive a strategy to alternate cities from specialists to growth in phases as my happiness allows.

Universal healthcare works to a limited degree as well adding a bit of global happiness, but it isn't much.

Every other ideology happiness perk I see is local though, thus can't beat the cap per city.

 

[inthesomeday]

idk why u guys have so big happynes problems with liberty
as long as u settle ondly one city per lux u should not have that big of problems

Settle a city on a unique lux, improve the lux, and the city is at population 1, covering itself. Build a colosseum and a zoo, and the city can support population 5. Connect it to the capital and it can support population 6-- this is because of a policy that, in a 6 city empire, equals ten pop in the capital with monarchy. Say the theoretical expand has one more luxury within its second ring, which the border expand governor will usually prioritize-- any luxury, including one you already have, which will be traded away, and the city can now support a population 10 using a "pays for itself" sort of model. Imagine we get a decent wide religion, the city can support population 11-12 in consideration of mosque/pagodas. Enhancer believe will bring this up to population 12-14, ideally (asceticism/religious centers). Of course, because prophet time doesn't scale with city number, this is easier to come by in a wide empire.
This means a liberty city will usually, if well planned, be able to support up to basically population 15 when taking into account the -5% population unhappiness. If you have 2x as many cities as a tradition player, this means that player will need EVERY ONE of their cities to be size 30 in order to be competitive in science in the most base level possible, population. Wider empires also have more specialists and more jungles, meaning a slight edge on science anyway.
And measuring happiness this way doesn't even take into account variables like multi-lux capitals, wider ability to satisfy the quests of mercantile city states (more military hammers for barb encampments, quantitatively more luxes, more liberty great people, etc).
Overall I really dislike the argument that taller empires are inherently better with happiness. Sure, they're more efficient, needing to balance less number of cities happiness, but the local happiness system is actually to the benefit of wide empires. What happens when your population size within each individual monster city in tall overruns your local happiness capabilities in those cities? Every city in the game has the same level of maximum self-sustained happiness, and tradition cities are more likely to run this over than well built liberty cities. Most cities cap off around 20 pop, regardless of how long it takes to get there, and with the local happiness system this is across the board to EVERY city. This means empires with more cities will simply have more sustainable population.
And this is without even taking into account the biggest advantage liberty has over tradition: productivity. Republic early game counterbalances the only conceivable early game bonus tradition gives to its expands, which is to say legalism. After that, a liberty expand's production is inevitably superior to a tradition expand's production, and the growth is equal until the tradition FINISHER, which doesn't come until usually the early to mid medieval, only an era or an era and a half before food loses out to production. And besides, in an apple to apple comparison, more cities are able to produce more food.

All in all, the advantages of a tall empire with tradition versus a wide empire with liberty all eventually become moot, and often times this happens before even the early renaissance. Come ideologies, the comparison flips out; freedom liberty means more specialists, order liberty means more cities, autocracy liberty means more hammers and gold for military.

 

[jackelgull]

Try the More Cities mod. I've never looked back. What this mod does is get rid of the unhappiness generated by number of cities and increase in culture and technology costs created by number of cities. You're still left with unhappiness from occupied cities, as well as increased production cost for national wonders, but I assume you can handle that much.

also, protectionism, which is a part of the commerce tree is a must for those going wide.

 

[danaphanous]

I agree with everything you said, well put! This is also why I prefer to play a bit "wider". But "wide" vs. "tall" is not really my argument. It's the penalties that eventually put a hard cap on city number that I don't like. People speak of "ICS" but it really isn't possible anymore. You have to stop, usually around 12 cities on a typical game. So this is what I play and it IS more fun then 4 cities and I can usually make them pretty powerful. However, consider this. We can manage a wide empire becasue we know the game and all the ways to work the system. However, the system is not intuitive for a new player that doesn't know about the local happiness cap, settling penalties. They play wide and go majorly unhappy. It is a huge learning curve. This is why I say the system is nonintuitive. If they'd simply made it so that population and occupation were the only unhappiness sources it would have been far simpler to keep up with and felt more real. And it would also be possible to found lategame cities not near luxuries, which seems a rather arbitrary requirement don't you think? The current system "works" but I wouldn't call it good design. The choices were made for balance without a good simulation of realism imho.

So yeah, wider games are better in many ways, no argument there. I don't agree with you that they will win a speed science victory over tradition, but that is mainly due to timing restraints. They would eventually if given a bit more time to play against each other.

 

[danaphanous]

Try the More Cities mod. I've never looked back. What this mod does is get rid of the unhappiness generated by number of cities and increase in culture and technology costs created by number of cities. You're still left with unhappiness from occupied cities, as well as increased production cost for national wonders, but I assume you can handle that much.

also, protectionism, which is a part of the commerce tree is a must for those going wide.

thanks! I was wondering if everyone overlooked my request for appropriate mods! this sounds perfect taking out the two things that make no sense with the system!

Protectionism is amazing for this yes. It usually comes so late though that options are limited, but maybe this is because I open rationalism or another 2nd tree first? I may try a wide/huge map game with it to take advantage earlier bc you are right, commerce is perfect for a wide empire. Do you open it as your second tree after liberty? I'm often tempted to dip into piety because I support my large empires with a happy religion usually with at least one religious building. Which do you find pans out better (I realize RB's are also local happiness but the culture/faith is so nice!)