Balance - The "Wide vs Tall" Problem

[Drakir89]

I haven't read all pages of this discussion (only 1,6,7) but as an old CEP player I want to drop in and leave my 2 cents:

I think the core resource of any civilization game is LAND. Land is claimed and then converted into population (via cities) which in turn become more specialised, refined resources like production or gold. All victory conditions are about gathering resources and converting them into units/tourism/science/relationships. And all of those resources first come from land (or coast), which is also the most interactive resource from a MP perspective (where we can compete for it or fight over it).

While I think it's great for players to step back from expanding to develop the land they already have, if getting more land (read: decent city spots) is harmful to my growth potential the game is broken. That said, I think it is vital that sometimes the opportunity cost of claiming land is so high you want to do other things instead. Basically I mean that a tall empire (four cities) should not stand up to the wider empire "because it is tall" but because when the wide empire was expanding the tall empire invested in wonders or city states which help it make up for falling behind in land. Thus, when balancing tall versus wide one needs to be VERY careful with stuff like scaling empire penalties or we get a game where all civs build four cities and farm the lands inbetween for barb camp rewards.

Regarding actual changes, I do believe the game still needs a scaling city penalty (like civ4 had) so land grabbing is expensive and requires players to get ahead in technology and culture before they can gobble up all the remaining land (again, like in civ4). I think the most elegant way to solve this is to make each city cost slightly more than the previous one (say, 0.75 per city). This way the first city might cost 2 , the next city cost 2.75 and the third costing 3.5 . This means that to overcome increasing happiness costs of new cities players need to develop their technology or culture, or take the growth hit now to have more land to develop later on. In addition to this I think the science penalty per city should be removed, the weaker national wonders be buffed and national college nerfed. I'd also like to see the wide penalties for culture scaled back somewhat, since I think founding a city which causes a nationwide yield penalty is very unfun and completely different from simply having a high upkeep cost. The cost can be overcome, the yield penalty just sits there, staring at you...

 

[Stalker0]

I think the most elegant way to solve this is to make each city cost slightly more than the previous one (say, 0.75 per city). This way the first city might cost 2 , the next city cost 2.75 and the third costing 3.5 .

I too think that Civ IVs economy system was much more elegant than Civ 5's. Whether the scaling you mentioned above would be effective I am not sure. However, now that we have tied unhappiness to all yields (including science) it could be a possibility.

I am loathe to change the internal trade route system. Its fun, it works, I think it competes fine with external trade routes...I don't really wish to change it.

Again, I think we are poking the wrong bear. Having wide and tall compete in the same arenas I think is an exercise doomed in failure. The question is....what should tall be better at than wide? I still think there has to be a victory component to this question but beyond that....we need to pick something to make tall better at, and then focus on it.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the core resource of any civilization game is LAND.

Drakir I will disagree with you here. In Civ 5, the only real benefit of pure land is in luxury goods. In that, having a wide empire was a distinct advantage. And the tweaks we have made to luxury goods (though I still think it needs work) I think help curb that quiet a bit.

The core resource of Civ 5 is population. Population = Worked Tiles = Resources. The only exception to that are buildings that ultimately generate some free resources, or that magnify my resource (aka free workers).

If I don't have population, the land itself is almost meaningless. Heck with specialists I can still get a heavy amount of benefit even with no land.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I am loathe to change the internal trade route system. Its fun, it works, I think it competes fine with external trade routes...I don't really wish to change it.

By the way, agreement here. Giving up the growth of satellite cities in order to feed a main city (food transport) is usually not worth it, because you can do much more with just growing the satellite cities instead. Similar arguments are true for hammer transfers.

The Civ5 internal trade route system isn't super realistic, but it's useful, fun and low on micromanagement. Let's not change it.

 

[Stalker0]

So I decided to test out our assumptions a bit before moving forward more aggressively with changes.

One of the assumptions we are making is that Wide Empires make more science and culture than tall ones...even due to the penalty. Basically they "make it up" with their raw wideness!

I wanted to test that with actual data. I have attached an excel (a crude excel I just threw together) with snapshots from a couple of games I have played with the current version of the mod.

Feel free to check my numbers (especially on how I am scaling science and culture costs please), and I will need to gather more data points before making any final conclusions.

That said, what you will see is that there is a distinct cutoff point where more cities actually generate less science and culture for the Civ overall.

Summary:

Game 1 - Turn 304 (Pursuing Science for the most part)
Science Max: 7/10 cities. Culture Max: 2/10

Game 2 - Turn 210 (Pursuing Science for the most part)
Science Max: 3/5 cities. Culture Max: 2/5


Again, 2 data points does not a final conclusion make (especially from just one person's gameplay style). But its a start, and since the initial results are against our hypothesis, I would love if more people could provide their data from actual gameplay experience.

 

[Drakir89]

Drakir I will disagree with you here. In Civ 5, the only real benefit of pure land is in luxury goods. In that, having a wide empire was a distinct advantage. And the tweaks we have made to luxury goods (though I still think it needs work) I think help curb that quiet a bit.

The core resource of Civ 5 is population. Population = Worked Tiles = Resources. The only exception to that are buildings that ultimately generate some free resources, or that magnify my resource (aka free workers).

If I don't have population, the land itself is almost meaningless. Heck with specialists I can still get a heavy amount of benefit even with no land.

While I think you make a really good point here, I'd say population is made from food which is almost exclusively gotten from land. It's a chicken and egg problem where population needs land to work (for food if nothing else) and lands need population to work it to be of any use. Allow me to rephrase my previous argument: The reason we should care about the value of land is not because it is a "core resource" but because it is deep and interactive (where and when to settle are important and difficult decisions). Thus, my point still stands. Being in a situation where new cities (which have a significant upfront cost) actually lowers your resource yields is very problematic. Instead increase the upfront cost; make it a challenge to be overcome instead of a wet blanket that smothers your expansion.

The reason I post here before properly learning about the changes in the mod is because the OP worries me a lot. I don't play BNW anymore (I prefer G&K) despite liking trade routes, ideologies and the world council. (I think tourism is poorly implemented.) The reason is the triple punishment it introduced against wide styles:
1. Trade routes and culture guilds don't scale with empire size and are very significant.
2. New science penalty for expansion.
3. Excessive diplomacy penalties for warfare (I think they increased the penalties for rapid expansion as well, not as territorial rivalry but a pure city count penalty).

I think just the trade routes and possibly the culture overhaul would be more than enough. My experience is that continued expansion and especially conquest is simply not viable anymore, and games come down to how good locations you can find for your first cities since that's all the land you'll be using for most of the game. CEP recognized this as a big problem and the first page of this thread made me worry the people working on the Community Patch Project might overlook it instead. Now I need to stop posting before I know the details of the mod .

PS. I think it is vital that foreign trade routes are better than internal routes. Foreign routes have higher requirements: You need a friendly neighbor and the actual route is usually harder to protect, also the other party can always declare war and pillage your routes. Cheaper buildings are weaker than more expensive ones. I think "cheaper" trade routes (with lower requirements) should be weaker than more expensive ones.

 

[Seek]

Currently a player with many cities has more internal trade routes, which means more production and food, while those cities end up producing enough gold so that player often doesn't even need to have external trade routes. This just creates the "tall and wide" scenario, where the player has a massively large and well populated empire that just steamrolls over the others.

Er, no they don't; Trade Routes come from tech and a couple wonders. If you mean that "wide" empires get more TRs to the capital, that's not really true either - until the late game most civs have less than 6 TRs, and a seven-city empire is not exactly "wide", it's what I'd call typical. Tall empires use TRs to make all cities tall.:/

I'd actually question some of your core assumptions/assertions in this thread (not trying to be hostile, I just don't agree with some of you premises).

Firstly, your definition of wide and tall doesn't take into account that it is not binary, there is a "normal" or "typical" range which is not really either (or is both, as in the "wide and tall" setup you've mentioned a couple times earlier in this thread). I'd say 4-8 cities is in this range, while 1-3 is "tall" while 10+ is "wide".

Secondly, I haven't seen any discussion of when the cities are planted in this thread, so does planting one city per era count as "wide"? Does planting 2-4 cities off a four-pop capital in an ancient era-REX, then adding 6 more in the modern era count as wide or tall? I think this merits some consideration; I find going wide in the early game a tremendous challenge, one that will inevitably leave you lacking in at least a couple departments (happiness, gold, diplomacy, science, etc.) so this is less of an issue, while gradually expanding into a wide empire over the course of the game is generally successful - and I think this should remain true.

Thirdly, I've seen plenty of good MP players be very successful with a tall strategy of ≤4 cities (as long as they can defend the inevitable late-game world war that seems to happen in the majority of MP games). Similarly, I have seen many MP games where the wide empire fails. I don't think it is so cut-and-dry as you make it out to be. And wrt single-player a tall strat is clearly viable.

I am very intrigued by the new happiness system, but I do not see the tall vs wide imbalance in unmodded BNW which is the premise of this thread.

 

[Stalker0]

My experience is that continued expansion and especially conquest is simply not viable anymore, and games come down to how good locations you can find for your first cities since that's all the land you'll be using for most of the game...Now I need to stop posting before I know the details of the mod .

This right here is why you should continue to post!!

As you mentioned the OP is stating an assumption...that the wide style is superior to tall. Beyond that...so much so that it constitutes a balance problem that needs to be addressed.

You are arguing, and I have argued as well, that the assumption is not necessarily true. There are a lot of disincentives to go wide, and there is the possibility that wide is in fact not a superior strategy at all.

That is why it needs to be debated, and why I started gathering data from my own games to see how it pans out. I have no issue with working on expansion curtailing and the like if we determine that wide is such a stronger strategy. But I am not fully convinced of that yet...and I want to be before we proceed with larger scale changes.

 

[Drakir89]

Again, I think we are poking the wrong bear. Having wide and tall compete in the same arenas I think is an exercise doomed in failure. The question is....what should tall be better at than wide? I still think there has to be a victory component to this question but beyond that....we need to pick something to make tall better at, and then focus on it.

1. Tall should get more policies, which would either help make up for the lack of land or give them an early edge in City States, tourism or religion thanks to the respective policy trees.
2. Tall should have an easier time building wonders.
3. Tall should have easy access to powerful national wonders.
4. Tall should have an easier time changing their grand strategy thanks to more focused production.
5. Tall should be easier to achieve and cost less than wide (fewer settlers, workers and military units). The tall bonuses are a consolation prize for losing the race for land, but hopefully Tall won some other race (tech or a crucial wonder) which still puts it on par with Wide.

Basically I disagree. I don't think there should be a clear divide between tall and wide civs, rather a grey area of differently tweaked empires.

Note how I made a new post immediately after saying I would hold back on posting (seriously, if this is offensive or something please tell me)

 

[Wodhann]

By the way, agreement here. Giving up the growth of satellite cities in order to feed a main city (food transport) is usually not worth it, because you can do much more with just growing the satellite cities instead. Similar arguments are true for hammer transfers.

The Civ5 internal trade route system isn't super realistic, but it's useful, fun and low on micromanagement. Let's not change it.

It's fun, but if it needs balancing it needs balancing. I'm with whoward here, to me it doesn't makes sense that you get food and production from nowhere, not that we necessarily need to follow his solution but it's a good point and the way the system currently works is it benefits wide empires more than tall ones - although it does benefit tall ones as well, and may play an integral part in making them tall in the first place.

a seven-city empire is not exactly "wide", it's what I'd call typical.

If you're talking standard maps, then we're horribly apart, and I understand why you think there's no issue then. And even in huge maps I would consider seven cities a startup point for Wide.

while 10+ is "wide"

... Wow. We're REALLY apart here. I can see why you think WvT isn't an issue then, if 10+ cities is your definition of wide then pretty much most games are tall vs tall games.

Thirdly, I've seen plenty of good MP players be very successful with a tall strategy of ≤4 cities (as long as they can defend the inevitable late-game world war that seems to happen in the majority of MP games). Similarly, I have seen many MP games where the wide empire fails. I don't think it is so cut-and-dry as you make it out to be. And wrt single-player a tall strat is clearly viable.

If you are talking about competitive Civ5, then show me, because I haven't seen any serious game like that. Otherwise, if they're casual games, it's irrelevant for balance.

And honestly... these denialist "this is not an issue to start with" arguments are really fruitless, which is why I'm not dedicating more time in answering this. If you think civ5 is currently fine in that regard, then there's no real need for a balance patch for you apart from maybe some other tweaks. But other people have a problem with it and they want to see a solution.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

So what even if Wide is better? Why shouldn't it be? It requires more micromanagement and the genre is 4X - one of those X's is Xpand. It makes no sense for an empire NOT to want to expand.

Tall players are pretty much just lazy and don't want to get more cities - why should they be rewarded for that? Bigger should always be better, (reasonable) land should always be claimed. I don't understand why the easier road which requires much less player input and thought should be superior or equal.


And I don't get where all this "Wide is obviously better" comes from. I mean... From the threads I've seen in the General Discussion most people praise and prefer 3-4 cities playstyle and consider Tradition the best?

 

[Wodhann]

How about before you guys complain about this being unnecessary, you play the results and see if you like them or not. Again, arguing against this is fruitless, it's not constructive and doesn't help us advance other aspects of balance - remember the new happiness system, which you praise, wouldn't exist if we didn't start this discussion.

I'll personally start ignoring these kind of arguments from now on by the way - if someone else wants to tackle them that's fine, but I won't. I see your arguments, I know your points, and I disagree, moving on.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll personally start ignoring these kind of arguments from now on by the way - if someone else wants to tackle them that's fine, but I won't. I see your arguments, I know your points, and I disagree, moving on.

With respect, this is the kind of argument that is not constructive.

The goal of this project is a community balance patch. It is reasonable to expect that the patch deals with factors that the community feels are actually problems.

Our goals area has listed out many areas to tackle, and many of those so far seem to have wide support (or at least minimal criticism). However, this is one area that does not. Several posters have mentioned their concerns in this thread that the problem that is outlined is actually not a problem.

If we are making changes to an aspect of the system that the community does not feel is broken, that is not balance. Further, this is not an issue like fixing a weak unit or correcting a policy. Rebalancing wide vs tall is going to hit a lot of areas...it could be potentially be a very wide rebalancing. That should not be done casually.

 

[Wodhann]

With respect, this is the kind of argument that is not constructive.

The goal of this project is a community balance patch. It is reasonable to expect that the patch deals with factors that the community feels are actually problems.

Our goals area has listed out many areas to tackle, and many of those so far seem to have wide support (or at least minimal criticism). However, this is one area that does not. Several posters have mentioned their concerns in this thread that the problem that is outlined is actually not a problem.

If we are making changes to an aspect of the system that the community does not feel is broken, that is not balance. Further, this is not an issue like fixing a weak unit or correcting a policy. Rebalancing wide vs tall is going to hit a lot of areas...it could be potentially be a very wide rebalancing. That should not be done casually.

I said I was going to ignore them, not that they shouldn't be said, because I feel like repeating myself.

There's no conciliation between "this is a problem" and "this is not a problem". It's one way or the other. If my opinion is the minority and everybody thinks the WvT issue is not real, then my opinion is the one that should be disregarded. But so far it seems that most people think there is some level of problem with this, and competitive play seems to agree with me - wide tends to crush tall opponents most of the time, if not all the time.

That's why I said I'm ignoring them. It's just gonna be "I think this, you're wrong in this" and there's no conciliation. If you think that Civilization 5 should be like former civilizations and all about being Wide, then we're in deep disagreement and there's no way to reconcile that.

The reason I say the argument is not constructive is because the fact remains, either you stick with what exists or you change things around and provide a different gameplay experience - is it really worth doing the former? You already HAVE the game with no WvT balance. There's no point arguing for it.

 

[Stalker0]

But so far it seems that most people think there is some level of problem with this, and competitive play seems to agree with me - wide tends to crush tall opponents most of the time, if not all the time.

To your point, is there any kind of collected data we could look at? I'm trying to collect some empirical data myself, so if there are collected games hi-lighting the imbalance I would love to see that.

 

[Wodhann]

To your point, is there any kind of collected data we could look at? I'm trying to collect some empirical data myself, so if there are collected games hi-lighting the imbalance I would love to see that.

Only observation. All games I've seen ended up with a wide empire winning, excepting casual games where people went "let's vote x player for world leader huehuehue"

 

[Lukeroge]

Never understood the "food and production from nowhere" effect of internal trade routes. If you're shipping goods from A to B, simply supply and demand mechanics will generate revenue (gold) but the goods don't arrive out of thin air.

Internal trade routes should be a decision between food/production here (A) or there (B) not both. And, like processes, the amount of food/prod arriving at B should be a (configurable) percent of what left A

Stuff like this makes sense from a realism perspective, but honestly, CIV never has been and never will be realistic. I think it's a nice gameplay feature.

As for others comments about "casuals", not everyone is extremely competitive. Civ V is a really nice, accessible game for users of all levels and we should try to keep it that way

 

[Stalker0]

One interesting thing I am noticing in my games recently. Because the AI is not so gung ho about wonders early game...I am finding that I am going 1-2 cities much longer in the game.


There are so many wonders early in the game that I can now actually pick up, so I will spend a lot of turns to pick up wonders now instead of expanding.

Is anyone else noticing the same thing in their gameplay?

 

[Funak]

One interesting thing I am noticing in my games recently. Because the AI is not so gung ho about wonders early game...I am finding that I am going 1-2 cities much longer in the game.


There are so many wonders early in the game that I can now actually pick up, so I will spend a lot of turns to pick up wonders now instead of expanding.

Is anyone else noticing the same thing in their gameplay?

Been playing on emperor while testing the patch out and been trying to grab both ToA and Hanging gardens while still trying to secure nearby viable locations for expanding after that I usually focus more on getting workers and buildings that I've skipped in the capital. I'm not really a huge fan of the other ancient era wonders, however I start the oracle sometimes if the AI skips it, which for some reason they seem to do.

 

[Tucker89]

It's fun, but if it needs balancing it needs balancing. I'm with whoward here, to me it doesn't makes sense that you get food and production from nowhere, not that we necessarily need to follow his solution but it's a good point and the way the system currently works is it benefits wide empires more than tall ones - although it does benefit tall ones as well, and may play an integral part in making them tall in the first place.

It doesn't come from nowhere: there's an opportunity cost. I could use this caravan to send food or hammers to another city of mine, or I can send it to a foreign city and gain gold and science.

Technically, there's a lot of things that come from nowhere. When my caravan visits foreign cities, where is the gold coming from? What about the trade route gold from connecting cities? That's generating gold from somewhere (or nowhere).

If you're going to change internal trade due to what seems to be food and hammers from thin air, then by that logic you would have to change city connections and external trade routes too.