Bad feature that needs to go: the slider

[Ahriman]

Why? I've got all this money sitting around in the treasury and I'd like to pump it into my research!

Capacity constraints, seems perfectly reasonable.


I see Pazyrk's point, but removing the slider (essentially; fixing it at some constant level, probably 50%) has other problems. It makes you *very* vulnerable to economic difficulties, because you can no longer reduce your science output in order to avoid deficit.

So if you're low on gold, then any economic difficulty can push you into being unable to maintain your army. That kind of knife-edge effect is dangerous.
IRL, a government can use borrowing to smooth cycles, but there's no way to do that in Civ. So there has to be some other continuous variable to let you smooth out economic shocks.

The slider is an elegant way to do that, along with its ability to model deciding whether to spend on your wealth on gold (save it), science or support the arts - a decision certainly made by many rulers.

I guess another way would be to let you go into negative gold, with increasing production penalties and happiness penalties the lower you went, but again you could get trapped in a deathspiral with that kind of mechanic.

[Note for the speculators; I don't remember seeing any sign of sliders in the handful of screenshots we saw.]

 

[Pazyryk]

Well, if you like having research, tax and culture all controlled through a slider, why not production too? We could have a production slider so that you don't need mines, lumbermills, etc. Just set the production slider instead. You could just have generic "commerce" from each tile that can be funneled to anything (research, tax, culture or production). You still have forges, libraries, marketplaces, etc., but you don't need to worry about which is which when you develop your city. Just build them all and set the slider to get whatever you need.

Edit: I know I'm taking an extreme position in the OP. But I do think that there should be some consequence to building too many libraries vs. too many banks.

 

[Ahriman]

Then propose an alternative mechanism that doesn't have worse problems.

Its not perfect, but just removing it (effectively forcing it to be 50/50 gold/science for example) will have a lot of problems.

Well, if you like having research, tax and culture all controlled through a slider, why not production too?

It doesn't bother me to distinguish between manufactured output (capital intensive, limited by macro ability to actually create physical output) vs intellectual issues like research and culture.

 

[MrBanana]

One thing that always bugged me is that you cannot run your science above 100%. Why? I've got all this money sitting around in the treasury and I'd like to pump it into my research!

Either your amazing, playing settler, or underexpanding. I almost never run at 100% and I'm only a prince player.

 

[PieceOfMind]

[Note for the speculators; I don't remember seeing any sign of sliders in the handful of screenshots we saw.]

Not sure if you're joking about this but I don't recall seeing any interface at all. Unless we hear about it from the devs, the fact that sliders have been in every civ version so far means it's probably reasonable to assume there will be a slider in civ5.

Either your amazing, playing settler, or underexpanding. I almost never run at 100% and I'm only a prince player.

It only takes binary teching. As an example, if it'll take you 14 turns to research Iron Working at 50%:50% science:gold, then it's considered better by many players to (approximately speaking) run 100% gold for 7 turns then 100% science for 7 turns. There are many reasons for and against this, probably too detailed to go into in this thread, but many high level players regularly do it so it's quite relevant to discussions about the slider.

Being able to run science more than 100% (something I'm against by the way), as suggested by chongli, would have consequences for that strategy. If you allowed science greater than 100%, what would the limit be? Presumably it would be pretty bad game design to have no limit and allow you to save gold for 95% of the game, occasionally doing a 1-turn-research of the tech you want. It's gamey and silly IMO.

 

[Ahriman]

Not sure if you're joking about this

Not joking. We got some interface from the background of some magazine articles.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=356433

 

[PieceOfMind]

Not joking. We got some interface from the background of some magazine articles.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=356433

Thanks for pointing it out. I hadn't noticed it!

It looks to me like the art style and interface are heavily influenced by that from CivRev - not surprising in the least.

 

[moscaverde]

@Tomice

This idea of "random" research is something that already was implemented once, in SMAC you could set the area of research you want (military, expansion, etc) and the game would focus on that area, so you did't see directly what you're going to discover.

 

[Osama Bin Davis]

just like you can be at 0% and still be making beakers...

this has always bugged me a bit, if im doing 100% on science, why can't I use my extra money to pump into say culture.

I like the sliders, they just need some tweaking i think.

 

[PieceOfMind]

this has always bugged me a bit, if im doing 100% on science, why can't I use my extra money to pump into say culture.

I like the sliders, they just need some tweaking i think.

That is what "build culture" is for.

I really don't understand why many people want sliders to total to more than 100%. Just imagine the slider percentages to mean the division of efforts among the intellectuals in your population. In that sense, it's meaningless to speak of totals more than 100%.

Imagine getting an electrician to do the wiring in your house and you ask him to do it twice as fast if you give him twice as much money. Assuming he is not able to employ another person to help him, why would you expect him to do the job faster because of the promise of higher pay, assuming he isn't a slacker normally!? When you have a limited population of intellectuals, throwing more money at them doesn't make them think faster or get jobs done faster.

Perhaps more importantly, there are balance problems with the suggestion of allowing greater than 100% total of sliders. As I said earlier, tech discoveries would always be made by researching for one turn (assuming no limit on how high over 100% you can go).

 

[frekk]

I like the slider! It's a simple, clean and brilliant system for controlling your economy.

Seconded. It's very streamlined, very easy to use, intuitive, and most of all, handles the distribution of commerce in a way that's free of micromanagement.

It's possible to come up with more interesting or realistic models, but you can't beat the slider for sheer functionality and simplicity.

 

[Osama Bin Davis]

That is what "build culture" is for.

I really don't understand why many people want sliders to total to more than 100%. Just imagine the slider percentages to mean the division of efforts among the intellectuals in your population. In that sense, it's meaningless to speak of totals more than 100%.

Imagine getting an electrician to do the wiring in your house and you ask him to do it twice as fast if you give him twice as much money. Assuming he is not able to employ another person to help him, why would you expect him to do the job faster because of the promise of higher pay, assuming he isn't a slacker normally!? When you have a limited population of intellectuals, throwing more money at them doesn't make them think faster or get jobs done faster.

Perhaps more importantly, there are balance problems with the suggestion of allowing greater than 100% total of sliders. As I said earlier, tech discoveries would always be made by researching for one turn (assuming no limit on how high over 100% you can go).

it does when you are able to have better facilities, tools and technology

 

[Ahriman]

it does when you are able to have better facilities, tools and technology

Right, but those are represented by libraries, marketplaces, forges, etc.
There are in-game methods that boost productivity of your inputs.

You can give the electrician better tools that increase his production per hour, but you can't make him work more than 24 hours a day.

There is no need to be able to increase *inputs* over 100%. 100% is, by definition, the maximum input you can divert to a single venture.

 

[Pazyryk]

Civ3 (or maybe it was Civ2?) had limits on the slider for different governments. So, iirc, monarchy could only go to 80% research, and democracy to 100%. I think this was to simulate the fact that modern nations really do put a significant fraction of GDP (maybe 20%, but certainly not 80% or 100%!) back into research. Older civs either didn't or could't convert that commerce into research. So I wouldn't mind a slider that let you put maybe 0 - 30% of your total commerce into research (depending on civics).

I'm not trying to promote some complicated economic model here, and I really don't care about "realism." I'd just like to see the different buildings (libraries, marketplaces, banks, universities, etc.) have a differential impact on research vs. revenue that can't be totally erased with the slider.

 

[Ahriman]

I'd just like to see the different buildings (libraries, marketplaces, banks, universities, etc.) have a differential impact on research vs. revenue that can't be totally erased with the slider.

I agree completely that this is a worthy goal.

Hardcaps on extreme slider values are one possible method, though it doesn't work great (you only get the effect when the constraint is binding). Also becomes more complex if the slider can go 3-ways (ie culture).

Didn't SMAC have something like this too, with limits on slider values and then decreasing efficiency of converting energy into gold/beakers the further away from 50/50 you were (and affected by your "efficiency" value?
Been a very long time since I played SMAC, so I may be remembering this wrong.

 

[Pazyryk]

Also, it's stupid to have %gold modifier buildings (marketplaces, banks) when the game is set up so that many players run at 100% science. Yes, more advanced players may run 50/50 to 100 tax, but this is usually intermittent or late game. It is possible to run near 100% research the whole game, making marketplaces and banks worthless. This is just silly.

A redesign of building modifiers might be one way to make the slider less dominant and individual buildings more important. For example, give most research buildings a straight-up bonus (e.g., +5 research) rather than (or in addition too) the % science modifier. And if the game is set up so that 100% research is the default play style, then marketplaces and banks should either: 1) give a straightup gold bonus, or 2) modify commerce rather than gold.

 

[Ahriman]

The problem with +X bonuses rather than +X% bonuses is that it removes the incentive for city specialization.

If your market gives +X gold, you may as well build one everywhere, and you have the same incentives to build one in City A vs City B.

But if a market gives +X% gold, then you have higher incentive to build it in the city with lots of gold income (because its focusing on commerce rather than hammers by working cottages instead of mines, because it has gold income from religious shrine or other wonder, because it has gold income from merchant specialists, etc.) than you do in your unit production industrial power house.

I think encouraging specialization is a valuable design goal.

If we make buildings modify commerce directly, then we've failed in the design goal to distinguish economy booster from research boosters.

I don't think there is any obvious ideal solution, we just have to decide which annoyances we hate the least.

It is possible to run near 100% research the whole game

I do not find that this happens on the higher difficulty levels, especially if you do not found an early religion (for shrine gold). Civic upkeep and city upkeep get pretty steep.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Also, it's stupid to have %gold modifier buildings (marketplaces, banks) when the game is set up so that many players run at 100% science. Yes, more advanced players may run 50/50 to 100 tax, but this is usually intermittent or late game. It is possible to run near 100% research the whole game, making marketplaces and banks worthless. This is just silly.

A redesign of building modifiers might be one way to make the slider less dominant and individual buildings more important. For example, give most research buildings a straight-up bonus (e.g., +5 research) rather than (or in addition too) the % science modifier. And if the game is set up so that 100% research is the default play style, then marketplaces and banks should either: 1) give a straightup gold bonus, or 2) modify commerce rather than gold.

Thats weird... I wonder which version of Civ you are playing? If you can run on 100% research the whole game you are either a brilliant player or maaaaybee its time to ramp up the difficulty?

 

[Pazyryk]

If I play Monarch level and play as a builder, not warmonger, yes, I might run 100% research the whole game. When I play Emperor with better AI mod, I cannot do this. My guess is that most players play at Monarch or below, with base AI, and leave the slider at or close to 100% the whole game. (Am I wrong?)

 

[Sonereal]

If I play Monarch level and play as a builder, not warmonger, yes, I might run 100% research the whole game. When I play Emperor with better AI mod, I cannot do this. My guess is that most players play at Monarch or below, with base AI, and leave the slider at or close to 100% the whole game. (Am I wrong?)

But complaining that the easier modes are easy than harder modes doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.