Balancing the new Snail and Eternity

I have only noticed a very small increase in pushing next or more presicely "meager research/wealth" i my first city. I expect it is how you path your techs, for example I try and get the techs for building the wonders (Cave Dwelling and Bull Dancing) just before researching the noting to build techs. With cave Dwelling I like to have all the techs to build buildings studied just before or during the golden age to take advantage of it with buildings. ;)
 
I have been playing on snail and feel the same way. Before you could line up all your buildings and units and for the most part have no gaps for waiting. But now with all the techs and units taking longer to make I am left just pushing "next" for much of the early game were as before the chnage I did not.

The prehistoric era by definition has a lot of pushing 'next' and nothing else. You are limited to only 1 city until Tribalism, and there are only so many scouts and defensive units you can build. In short, that is just how Prehistoric is, and things get much more hectic in the Ancient and Classical Eras.
 
Having played another 500 or so turns today, I now think I was over reacting, and it's probably ok. My tech rate slowed down some and the effect is plenty of time to play in each era with the current unit rate. I'm past 1500 turns in and stil have not reached sedentary lifestyle, but I have had a major war and eliminated the ai player that shared my island.

Interestingly I am very short of gold (during the war I had to run 0% research for an extended period, and even run my capital in meager wealth at the same time to fund the peak of the war). I view this as a good thing, because it's the first time rfeally I have had to play a game and move away from pure research. I even had to raze the AIs final city because I couldn't afford to take it over! (yes, I do see this as a good thing)

So far by the way, I am having no issues with crime, though partly that's probably because I am not sufficiently technologically Advanced for the crime buildings to be available.
 
So far so good. I do think Culture Levels need refurbishing for Eternity (and possibly Snail too) to keep on par with the new # turns one needs.

I've set and will test Eternal using:
Level (old value) Test Value
Fledgling (180) 400
Developing (1800) 2000
Prominent (4500) 10000
Refined (9000) 25000
Elegant (45000) 100000
Influential (90000) 250000
Impressive (450000) 1000000
Legendary (900000) 2000000

Cheers
 
I disagree over the early levels as many starting points have good res in the secound ring but with realistic culture spread you might not get that wheat 2 north of capital when you actually need it in early times, while other civs who have it in first ring are much more favoured.
So, to even out starting situations, I suggest the old levels stay for 'fledgling' and 'developing' but new 'prominent' could have like 7500 instead of 10000 and the new 'refined' 20000 instead of 25000 rest new of new values are fine with me.
 
That's why I kept Developing at only 200 more. Not really a big difference in your capital, which is the only city you place without being able to "fast forward" culture (50 turns extra @ 4 culture, and you'll have minimum that due to Palace and Native Culture). With the new speeds 50 turns is nothing.
Fledgling @ 400 I get to @ turn 140. Have not even had time to get Oral Tradition by then, just been able to see where some resources are.
The "tough" one was Prominent as you need that 3rd bump for Forested Hills for the 2nd ring. But, am testing it out in the next few days to see how it works out.

Cheers
 
I disagree over the early levels as many starting points have good res in the secound ring but with realistic culture spread you might not get that wheat 2 north of capital when you actually need it in early times, while other civs who have it in first ring are much more favoured.
So, to even out starting situations, I suggest the old levels stay for 'fledgling' and 'developing' but new 'prominent' could have like 7500 instead of 10000 and the new 'refined' 20000 instead of 25000 rest new of new values are fine with me.

I think realistic borders could use some work. I see no reason why border pops (with realistic culture set) should occur 'all at once' with the crossing of new city culture levels. I'm thinking we should change it so that small spreads ( a tile here, a tile there) occur more progressively as you move between the defined levels. The effect would be to give the same amount of owned tiles as you get without realistic culture at the time you are (say) half way between city culture levels, but not necessarily the same set (ie - realistic culture spread would govern the way culture flows from tile to tile and thus the next tile to pop to at each micro-spread)

I see two benefits in this:
  1. It normalizes realistic vs non realistic culture options by ensuring the same owned area at each city culture level (and therefore also normalizes owned number of tiles between cities with the same amount of culture)
  2. It makes border expansion more progressive, which I think is both a better model for realistic spread, and an extra point of interest while playing
 
I think realistic borders could use some work. I see no reason why border pops (with realistic culture set) should occur 'all at once' with the crossing of new city culture levels. I'm thinking we should change it so that small spreads ( a tile here, a tile there) occur more progressively as you move between the defined levels. The effect would be to give the same amount of owned tiles as you get without realistic culture at the time you are (say) half way between city culture levels, but not necessarily the same set (ie - realistic culture spread would govern the way culture flows from tile to tile and thus the next tile to pop to at each micro-spread)

I see two benefits in this:
  1. It normalizes realistic vs non realistic culture options by ensuring the same owned area at each city culture level (and therefore also normalizes owned number of tiles between cities with the same amount of culture)
  2. It makes border expansion more progressive, which I think is both a better model for realistic spread, and an extra point of interest while playing
An easy way to go towards that would be to add some more early culture levels for realistic culture spread only (there are already two more later levels).
 
yeah great ideas! d'accord :)

single tile spread would be a implementing one of the not so many things I actually liked in civ5.
 
I have been playing with realistic culture spread on recently. I felt it was too wrong in AND.

It still does not seem to spread to visible resources ASAP nor do roads (trails etc.) affect the speed and direction of the spread. I feel taking both into account would improve the mechanic. It is one thing about Civ V I liked.

I like the suggestion by Koshling that culture spread could be a plot at a time rather than a bunch of plots.

One thing I noticed in my last game was that my second city was spreading its culture but it was spreading it to plots already within my cultural boundaries from my first city so the net effect was no spread to new plots. Sorry no saves.
 
I have been playing with realistic culture spread on recently. I felt it was too wrong in AND.

It still does not seem to spread to visible resources ASAP nor do roads (trails etc.) affect the speed and direction of the spread. I feel taking both into account would improve the mechanic. It is one thing about Civ V I liked.

I like the suggestion by Koshling that culture spread could be a plot at a time rather than a bunch of plots.

One thing I noticed in my last game was that my second city was spreading its culture but it was spreading it to plots already within my cultural boundaries from my first city so the net effect was no spread to new plots. Sorry no saves.

Yeh, the one-at-a-time I had in mind would spread to the best candidate next culture spot. The rules for selecting that would basically be:

Each candidate plot so one on your borders but not currently yours, would evaluate the total for all neighbours you do already own of <neighbour culture>*<transmission factor> and the one with the highest gets to be next to pop.

<transmission factor> would take account of:
  • Terrain type (low transmission into mountains, high into grasslands/plains etc.)
  • Boost for transmission into (revealed) resource bearing plots because naturally your poeple would want to move there over barren plot
  • Boost for trade network linked plots (so increased spread along routes and rivers)
  • Reduction for crossing a river

Ideally we'd add a <iCultureSpread> tag to terrains (to reflect how easily culture flows into them) and routes (how easily it flows along), but for now can just use movement costs/impassability as proxies.
 
In Civ5 there is also the option to buy land with gold. I think that's interesting but on the other hand too exploitable... with gold in C2C so i suggest you can produce culture to buy land with it later.

With open borders enemies could buy your land (much like orthodox settlers do with palestinian soil), so you might have a need to close borders sometimes (which I never do in games right now)...

The build culture process is not used for the most part of the game but with this it could get some more value, also the meager and lesser culture build.

How could a tile be bought?

Imagine the cursor getting like when you make a sign on a tile (ALT+S). Once you have enough built culture accumulated the field you focus on gets green (or any other colour) which means upon clicking it becomes part of your culture. The choice will be able to be done at beginning of turn or as a mini-symbol on the right. To have the tile picked near the city the culture was built in, only around that city tiles highlight as buyable. Maybe done in city UI as well, lot of possibilities with that.

In worldbuilder there is some code that allows you to pick if tiles are already either seen or unknown to the player, maybe it can be used.
 
In Civ5 there is also the option to buy land with gold. I think that's interesting but on the other hand too exploitable... with gold in C2C so i suggest you can produce culture to buy land with it later.

With open borders enemies could buy your land (much like orthodox settlers do with palestinian soil), so you might have a need to close borders sometimes (which I never do in games right now)...

The build culture process is not used for the most part of the game but with this it could get some more value, also the meager and lesser culture build.

How could a tile be bought?

Imagine the cursor getting like when you make a sign on a tile (ALT+S). Once you have enough built culture accumulated the field you focus on gets green (or any other colour) which means upon clicking it becomes part of your culture. The choice will be able to be done at beginning of turn or as a mini-symbol on the right. To have the tile picked near the city the culture was built in, only around that city tiles highlight as buyable. Maybe done in city UI as well, lot of possibilities with that.

In worldbuilder there is some code that allows you to pick if tiles are already either seen or unknown to the player, maybe it can be used.

You can already anex tiles if you have fixed borders.

BTW, my plan for culture spread alon routes would only b if the border was open, so it would be an implicit (much needed) buff for the 'closed borders' civic to defend from cultural attack
 
Yes, that's an absolutely interesting idea.. But I tried to enhance it with a twist:
rather than having soldiers upon the tile claiming it with force you could be at peace with neighbour yet buying the land as long as they don't close borders (imagine US buying Alsaka from Russia).
 
Yes, that's an absolutely interesting idea.. But I tried to enhance it with a twist:
rather than having soldiers upon the tile claiming it with force you could be at peace with neighbour yet buying the land as long as they don't close borders (imagine US buying Alsaka from Russia).

Could do. Right now I would prefer to focus on options (without precluding other enhancements such as that for the future) that add 'background' interest rather than much serious in the way of tactical/stratgeic options. Otherwise the magnitude of the task increases due to having to come up with associated AI to handle it.
 
true dat, only mentioning it so it could become a feature some time in the future when AI is intelligently adapting the whole game^^

Spoiler :
:borg: shhhh...it' alive!!!! :assimilate:
 
true dat, only mentioning it so it could become a feature some time in the future when AI is intelligently adapting the whole game^^

Spoiler :
:borg: shhhh...it lives!!!! :assimilate:

It's steadily improving. I am pretty confident that the AI we release with v23 will be about one whole difficulty level better than the on that was part of v22.
 
So far so good. I do think Culture Levels need refurbishing for Eternity (and possibly Snail too) to keep on par with the new # turns one needs.

I've set and will test Eternal using:
Level (old value) Test Value
Fledgling (180) 400
Developing (1800) 2000
Prominent (4500) 10000
Refined (9000) 25000
Elegant (45000) 100000
Influential (90000) 250000
Impressive (450000) 1000000
Legendary (900000) 2000000

Cheers

I don't think that culture needs to be nerfed. It is currently not as important even as it was in vanilla BtS, and doubling the growth thresholds would not help that situation.

That said, the main reason that increasing the Culture growth levels would be for the Culture Victory. I personally don't use it, so I may not be in the best position to comment, but I am thinking that when the Galactic Era and multi-maps are added that Culture will need a bit of an overhaul.
 
It's not nerfing culture, it's keeping it better on par with the increased amounts of turns.

Not doing so can cause a whole bunch of balance problems across the ages, a few include:
-With Larger Cities without Administration Buildings Option the Influential Culture and 3rd plot is reached way earlier than it should be, leading to increased growth/production/research before their time, which in turn leads to less turns to research earlier and earlier in the technology tree than was compensated and balanced for just this.
-Culture "wars" become more difficult as the culture levels increase influence faster, making it easier to avoid having newer cities being overtaken by culture by a highly cultural developed city nearby. It's harder as it is in C2C than Vanilla.
-Culture Victory, like you mentioned, comes at a lot less % of the game turns than it would otherwise.
-Wonder amounts per city are set by Cultural Level. Getting culture up faster means more wonders per city earlier, leading to tech leaders being able to grab more wonders in their production cities at the expense of more backwards nations being even less able to grab a wonder no one has had slots for yet.
-All cities will be able to get access to the second ring earlier than intended and thus gain growth/production/research, again less turns for research and before the tech tree reflects and balances an increase in science output.

There's more but those would be the big ones why when turn amounts are increased so should culture required per culture level. I've probably not even raised them enough which is why testing still. I did notice that I reached Influential Levels quite a bit too early, non-capitol cities even having it around middle of Medieval Era where it should be around early Renaissance Era for Capitol and possibly an early cultural center city.

Cheers
 
@Is612,
After playing 2 games with the updated Epic I'm finding that the game years/turn when you hit Med/Ren Era and above are too long. 1st game I was in the mid 1900AD (1969 iirc)and just hit the Industrial Era. Current game is at 1899AD and I'm still in the REN Era. I just got Frigates and Musketmen. The number of "years" per turn need reduced or the research rate increased.

I need to post a current financial screenie so you can see how your changes to inflation and Civic upkeep is doing. Will do so shortly.

JosEPh :)
 
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