@smallfish: Thanks for that link!
It certainly wasn’t a thread I’d seen before.
That said, it actually only partly addresses the first of the two points I raised, the city count. You see, it clearly shows that you’re right: it is indeed possible to spam cities in Civ 5. However, it also accords with my experience and earlier post too. This is evident from pi-r8’s point here: that the empire consisted of only 6 cities until around 1300 AD....which is precisely the point I made in my first post.
What’s more, as I see it, this strategy doesn’t address the second issue I raised: that each city contain more than a smattering of infrastructure / buildings in it. Indeed, pi-r8 illustrates this issue all too clearly in the screenshot of the newly founded city of Brest, which has a pop of just 1 - and zero infrastructure - in 1350AD. Now admittedly, it’s gotten a very healthy 16.25 hammers per turn and so can build plenty of infra from that point on (especially with the railroad bonus to come) – but it’s not at all uncommon for me to be playing a game of Civ 4 with an empire running into double digit city counts in the early ADs....and many of those cities will have (i) their core infra already in place and (ii) thanks to the whip, have constructed much, much more infra by the same stage of pi-r8’s game. I’d really love to have seen a couple of screenies illustrating the amount of infra in pi-r8’s other cities for comparison.
In view of pi-r8’s thread – for which I thank you again
- perhaps there’s something to be said for me revising the tenor of my first post so that it accords with the point that I’ve made in other threads: that the real issue re: production is perhaps that more hammers need to be made available earlier (in G&K in the context of this thread), so the gamer has sufficient “stuff” to build to sustain their interest, especially in the early – mid game. Given the point made by pi-r8, that even this strategy requires waiting until the industrial age to pay real dividends, I’d suggest that such a change in G&K would most definitely be a step in the right direction.
@Haig: Glad to see you enjoy the game.
IMHO, the key issue is how much a gamer needs to do each turn to sustain their interest in a game. The point I’m trying to make is that IMHO, Civ 5 gives me far too little to do per turn to sustain my interest – and this has its roots in the game’s pace of production, which limits the number of cities in a gamer’s empire and how many decisions they have to make per turn re: what to build in each city. I completely appreciate that others – including you – feel very differently and are happy with how much they do per turn of Civ 5.
Going back to the OP, the reason I posted was because it appears to me that much of the discussion in this thread - and indeed on the forum – has been about how much the expansion will improve with changes to diplomacy, the AI and new features like espionage and religion (with which I agree). However, as I stated earlier, I think these changes resolve only three of the four issues that the expansion needs to address before it becomes attractive to gamers such as me.
Unfortunately, I’m beginning to anticipate that Firaxis’ desire to balance small and large empires – which is a very honourable objective – means that the expansion’s pace of production will not be materially different from vanilla. If that’s the case, then as much as the new features will improve the expansion, it won’t be going far enough in the right direction to entice me to buy / I guess I’m simply not part of the target audience – and won’t be until Civ 5 / G&K is modded to provide more to do per turn.
