Building/Cost Ratios And Some Commentary

[Roxlimn]

DaveGold:

I never said it 'wasn't worth building when there's nothing else to build'. That's entirely your suggestion and although I wouldn't particularly disagree with it I'm certainly not going to argue it. I stated that time taken to build a workshop means that it is a marginal building in its era and only becomes strong in later eras. The implication is that you should build settlers, workers, work boats, or military units that are strong in that era and frequently provide immediate value.

Remember that buildings are a means to an end. They don't win you the game. They indirectly help you get things that do win the game such as military units from advanced technology. If you spend all your time building buildings you could often cut that stage down instead and win a game more directly. We could argue this out further but we patently disagree and there isn't much point. We've both stated our case already.

True. I don't think you've made a case here that military units are sufficiently powerful that you should build them rather than building a Workshop. In fact, from my time in the forums it seems that the common practice is to have a unit count of less than 10, normally, which is quite small in my book. If you have to consider whether to build a building or a unit and not have it be a forgone conclusion, then that's a good thing.

I'd look to build the market, then the university, use the spare hammers for a work boat or something else, and spend the extra money to upgrade a unit. If you've got another long building programme lined up for the city then the workshop will be better but we're then talking about a quite specialized infrastructure city for its era.

You'll be waiting a long time to get that money. Workshop only has 2 GPT maintenance, so you're looking at 45 Standard Speed turns to upgrade a Warrior to a Swordsman. That's half the number of Epic Speed turns where a Workshop becomes pure profit, and there's only so many Workboats you can build.

They're afraid of exactly the opposite of what has happened. They are afraid that the buildings will be too strong and will always be used as the only viable strategy. They've instead made the buildings too weak and most are omitted from what many people perceive as the clear strongest strategy. When one strategy dominates in such a fashion the game is partially broken since players don't want to replay the game under the same strategy every game. This is why there are so many threads on these boards illustrating the success of proliferating cities with trading posts (but no workshops).

The worst part is that end game buildings should potentially be game winners. The games do need to end somehow.

That strategy is founded on building and purchasing particular buildings. It dies without those buildings, no question. In fact, the common perception seems to be that the Colosseum is too strong, if anything. I doubt that the key problem is building cost to begin with - there are many factors that make that game approach strong. It's a long shot to be blaming it on building costs.

Moreover, without large cities and lots of infrastructure concentration, the Workshop loses significance. Doesn't mean it's worthless - just not worth it for particular types of cities. Nothing wrong with that.


Bandobras Took

Why would gold need to be reconsidered? If you remove the ability to rushbuy and the need to pay for buildings, then gold can still be spent among several areas: troops, tile buy, city-states, diplomacy, etc. Gold remains an effective means of getting things done.

The gold income is balanced around having cities with lots of infrastructure. This is one reason for why ICS is strong - it relies on many cities with less infrastructures, and thus, less maintenance.

If we remove maintenance, the gold income needs to be recalculated and rebalanced to account for the change.

The real question I was asking is whether we'd see building spam in all cities. In my opinion, we would not see building spam; Civ 5 already handles this problem elegantly through production costs.

Gold Maintenance on buildings is redundant because the hammer investment when hammers are so scarce (even in the best of production cities) is sufficient to make you seriously consider whether buildings are worth it.

Building rushbuy undercuts what is already an elegant solution because gold is so plentifully available compared to hammers.

I believe that you are balancing the game from the assumption that we are playing an ICS game. I do no believe that this is a wise point from which to design the game. We want the game to be more than just ICS.

If you do not Trade Post spam, hammers are more plentiful, and gold less so. Makes sense, no?

I really think you and DaveGold need to play a game wherein you made a conscious effort to make more buildings and to optimize their usages regardless of your current opinions on them. It'd help to establish some baselines, so I know I'm not talking to people who have no idea what I mean.

I've played an ICS game, so I'm perfectly aware of where you are both drawing your conclusions from.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Actually, no. I've never done an ICS game. In my last game, I didn't even go to war.

But it doesn't change that I would have been better off going to war and razing/rebuilding than simply developing my humble 6 cities. I had to put down one more than I wanted to, cutting into the eventual workable territory of my capitol, simply because my income could not keep up with the cost of the buildings I was building, none of which were needless extravagances.

I'll grant that I'm not an expert player. But ignoring maintenance entirely, there were some cities where I did not get a University until the Modern Era -- simply because other needs were more urgent -- happiness, culture to help claim enough tiles for the city to work, even walls and castles on my chokepoint cities to help in case an AI decided to take advantage of my skeletal military.

And I'll remind you of your quote:

I mean, if we want to build it everywhere, it just goes on the build queue of every city once the tech is researched.

It may go there, but only if you need the happiness. And it's precisely the non-ICSers that have to build the happiness buildings everywhere, because they're not getting a happiness bonus from cramming in another city where they can get a Colosseum for the same effect at a far cheaper cost.

Edit: Oh, and to forestall another inevitable comment: Yes, I do know how to set up a production city, if 240 hammers/turn is any indication. I'm also a realist enough to recognize that the ideal conditions don't always happen and that a production city will still usually require a dedicated gold city to support it.

 

[Roxlimn]

Bandobras Took:

I'll even go so far as to say that the ideal production site will only occur once within a continent usually, and maybe not even that often in every game. That said, 20 hammers for a large city is not that hard to manage, and that will suffice to build many buildings provided a modest hammer focus and Workshops.

But it doesn't change that I would have been better off going to war and razing/rebuilding than simply developing my humble 6 cities.

This would be true in virtually every version of Civ, including Civ IV. The value of extra cities greatly outweighs the maintenance of each one. The main difference between IV and V is that it's better to concentrate in IV until corporations, and that's mainly because IV doesn't have very many ways to counter city maintenance. The free buildings are a peripheral factor.

It may go there, but only if you need the happiness. And it's precisely the non-ICSers that have to build the happiness buildings everywhere, because they're not getting a happiness bonus from cramming in another city where they can get a Colosseum for the same effect at a far cheaper cost.

All players have to build happiness buildings to get anywhere good, and the ICS'ers in particular have to build Colosseums because the engine of the strat depends on it.

But it doesn't change that I would have been better off going to war and razing/rebuilding than simply developing my humble 6 cities. I had to put down one more than I wanted to, cutting into the eventual workable territory of my capitol, simply because my income could not keep up with the cost of the buildings I was building, none of which were needless extravagances.

I'll grant that I'm not an expert player. But ignoring maintenance entirely, there were some cities where I did not get a University until the Modern Era -- simply because other needs were more urgent -- happiness, culture to help claim enough tiles for the city to work, even walls and castles on my chokepoint cities to help in case an AI decided to take advantage of my skeletal military.

I think you need to devote more cities to just doing gold. Generally, I tend to site those cities where I can see a concentration of particular luxury resources. The cotton tiles are pretty good about gold, but the silver or gold ones are really the best. Without those cities, I note that you generally need Trade Post cities.

The upkeep on those buildings can reach significant amounts, so I really think it's necessary to adjust gold output if we're going to remove fully a third or more of things you need gold for.

I'm not saying that the maintenance is what's limiting the buildings - that seems to be more of what DaveGold is doing and I'm pretty sure I'm arguing against that point.

 

[DaveGold]

You'll be waiting a long time to get that money. Workshop only has 2 GPT maintenance, so you're looking at 45 Standard Speed turns to upgrade a Warrior to a Swordsman.

We're talking about building workshop (100h), marketplace(120h), university(200h), compared to marketplace, university, +spare hammers. Lets say a city has 8 production, 8 people, 12 income when workshops are first available. Push production to 10 with a workshop. Lets assume the city started smaller and grew bigger but take the 8/8/12 as an average,

With workshop
Turn 13 workshop built : +2 maintenance
Turn 25 market built : +3 income
Turn 45 university built : + 6 research (50% of 8+4 <library>), + 3 maintenance

Without workshop
Turn 15 market : + 3 income
Turn 40 university : +6 research, + 3 maintenance
up to turn 45 - build work boat or whatever else

So after 45 turn, using the workshop we have +64 maintenance, +60 income, + workshop

Without workshop we have +15 maintenance, +90 income, + 30 science, + work boat

As soon as you increase the production of the city the workshop will fare better. This is why it is marginal in its era and stronger outside its era. If you use the workshop in a specialist building city it looks by this calculation as if it might be in profit by the 4th building. A very high production city would presumably be used for wonders or units instead.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Bandobras Took:

I'll even go so far as to say that the ideal production site will only occur once within a continent usually, and maybe not even that often in every game. That said, 20 hammers for a large city is not that hard to manage, and that will suffice to build many buildings provided a modest hammer focus and Workshops.

I think you need to devote more cities to just doing gold.

I'll leave you to explain 20 hammers in more cities devoted to just doing gold.

This would be true in virtually every version of Civ, including Civ IV (. . .) and that's mainly because IV doesn't have very many ways to counter city maintenance. The free buildings are a peripheral factor.

Other than cottages, religious shrines, merchant specialists, great merchants, and large-yield luxury tiles? The free buildings showed that there was absolutely no need for building maintenance in a Civ game -- people still specialized their cities and didn't go around building every possible building just because it was available.

All players have to build happiness buildings to get anywhere good, and the ICS'ers in particular have to build Colosseums because the engine of the strat depends on it.

No. ICSers choose to found new cities and build colosseums because the alternative is to wait around and build Theaters and Stadiums. Same amount of happiness, worse deal.

The upkeep on those buildings can reach significant amounts, so I really think it's necessary to adjust gold output if we're going to remove fully a third or more of things you need gold for.

Actually, no. If you remove the gold maintenance cost from buildlings, all you'll reduce is

you need to devote more cities to just doing gold.

I'm not saying that the maintenance is what's limiting the buildings - that seems to be more of what DaveGold is doing and I'm pretty sure I'm arguing against that point.

Here's the portion I've been responding to:

Secondly, why would it be necessary for a late-game happiness building to be desirable to build everywhere? Doesn't that just make the game part of the game shallower? I mean, if we want to build it everywhere, it just goes on the build queue of every city once the tech is researched. Where's the decision-making in that? It's more of a sim-aspect of the game at that point, which has nothing to do with how well designed the game element actually is.

I'm pointing out that making buildings desirable to build anywhere in no way means that they'll actually get built everywhere. Opportunity cost would be sufficient, just as opportunity cost was generally sufficient in Civ 4.

 

[Roxlimn]

Bandobras Took:

I'll leave you to explain 20 hammers in more cities devoted to just doing gold.

5 Hill tiles, 8 Plains tiles, center tile. Or whatever combination you want. This is not a size 20 city - just size 13. Just needs food to get there.

Other than cottages, religious shrines, merchant specialists, great merchants, and large-yield luxury tiles? The free buildings showed that there was absolutely no need for building maintenance in a Civ game -- people still specialized their cities and didn't go around building every possible building just because it was available.

Actually, people kind of built every building they could. In Civ V, you don't build every building, even when you could. Different paradigm.

No. ICSers choose to found new cities and build colosseums because the alternative is to wait around and build Theaters and Stadiums. Same amount of happiness, worse deal.

Er. Not sure how that factors in. Regardless of the reasons, the Colosseum is a pretty important lynchpin of the ICS strategy, so it's a pretty important building that's worth it to build.

Actually, no. If you remove the gold maintenance cost from buildlings, all you'll reduce is

Quote:
you need to devote more cities to just doing gold.

If you weren't constrained to have more cities producing gold, you would have more than the normal amount of cities producing hammers or Science.

I'm pointing out that making buildings desirable to build anywhere in no way means that they'll actually get built everywhere. Opportunity cost would be sufficient, just as opportunity cost was generally sufficient in Civ 4.

I concur. That wasn't my point.

 

[Bandobras Took]

5 Hill tiles, 8 Plains tiles, center tile. Or whatever combination you want. This is not a size 20 city - just size 13. Just needs food to get there.

All right. So I need to feed 13 tiles and will therefore need 24 food. That's 6 riverside Grassland farms. Oops, I'm a size 19 city. Now I need to provide happiness to actually work that. Oops, I can't do that even with Colosseum+Theatre+Stadium -- that's only 12 happiness. So I'll need some social policies to provide happiness. Unfortunately, founding the city to pay for my other city has the problematic effect of making it harder to gain social policies, and I've got to get those tiles within the city borders somehow. So I'll add on a modest Monument and Temple to mitigate this (if I'm spending over a thousand gold in tile buying, the city's going to take a long time to really run a profit). The city is now generating me 26 gpt from the 13 trade posts I'm working. It's costing me 20 gpt from the happiness buildings and culture buildings necessary to actually work the tiles proposed. I'm getting 6 gpt out of the deal. I can now tack on my market, bank, and stock exchange. I don't know if they multiply before or after maintenance. At this point, I should probably found a new city without infrastructure to help pay for the city I built just for gold.

Actually, people kind of built every building they could. In Civ V, you don't build every building, even when you could. Different paradigm.

Er . . . if they couldn't build every building, then they didn't build every building, which still means that Civ 4 accomplished the same thing in a more elegant way.

Er. Not sure how that factors in.

I'll lay it out very simply, then. You yourself have stated that in order to have large, well-developed cities, you need to have city that focus on "just gold."

In other words, large, well-developed cities require another city to support them. Small cities with a skeletal infrastructure support other cities.

So the game is designed around the idea of having a bunch of small, profitable cities with little to no buildings. The designers stated in interviews that they intended to have a bunch of small, well-developed empires, then proceeded to attempt to punish the player for developing his empire.

Small cities built "just for gold" support other cities to such an extent that it's demonstrably better from both the research and gold vantage point to skip the large cities and their infrastructure entirely.

The production costs of most buildings would mitigate this except that gold can buy buildings, therefore the stronger gold approach wins out.

I concur. That wasn't my point.

I'll quote you again:

I mean, if we want to build it everywhere, it just goes on the build queue of every city once the tech is researched. Where's the decision-making in that?

If your point wasn't that it would be built everywhere, then what's the problem? It just goes in the queue and never gets built?

 

[Roxlimn]

Bandobras Took:

All right. So I need to feed 13 tiles and will therefore need 24 food. That's 6 riverside Grassland farms. Oops, I'm a size 19 city. Now I need to provide happiness to actually work that. Oops, I can't do that even with Colosseum+Theatre+Stadium -- that's only 12 happiness. So I'll need some social policies to provide happiness. Unfortunately, founding the city to pay for my other city has the problematic effect of making it harder to gain social policies, and I've got to get those tiles within the city borders somehow. So I'll add on a modest Monument and Temple to mitigate this (if I'm spending over a thousand gold in tile buying, the city's going to take a long time to really run a profit). The city is now generating me 26 gpt from the 13 trade posts I'm working. It's costing me 20 gpt from the happiness buildings and culture buildings necessary to actually work the tiles proposed. I'm getting 6 gpt out of the deal. I can now tack on my market, bank, and stock exchange. I don't know if they multiply before or after maintenance. At this point, I should probably found a new city without infrastructure to help pay for the city I built just for gold.

Don't need 6 riverside Grassland Farms. This is what I talk about when I say that math misleads people into thinking the wrong conclusions. The center tile has two food to start, so it pays for the first pop point and two tiles. Granary pays for another, Watermill another, and still more from Maritime food. Eight Plains tiles also supplies 8 food.

Off the top of my head, with 2 food from center, 4 from buildings and 8 from Plains, you only need 10 food from Maritimes to break even on food (about 3 from Industrial onwards in non-capital cities).

This posits a city on totally unremarkable terrain. Horses grant you +1 prod, as does Iron, though the base gold output will drop 2 for each instance.

Happiness can come from Meritocracy, Theology, plus the difficulty and luxury buffers, which are significant when you have less than 10 cities. For 10 cities, a maximized luxury spread will net you about 7 happiness per city.

I think you ought to be less invested in proving me wrong and more invested in finding ways to make things happen.

PS: markets, banks, and stock exchanges definitely multiply before maintenance. There are also SPs that reduce maintenance.

Er . . . if they couldn't build every building, then they didn't build every building, which still means that Civ 4 accomplished the same thing in a more elegant way.

Er, no. I'm finding it hard to express the idea. You're stuck in your own paradigm.

I'll lay it out very simply, then. You yourself have stated that in order to have large, well-developed cities, you need to have city that focus on "just gold."

In other words, large, well-developed cities require another city to support them. Small cities with a skeletal infrastructure support other cities.

So the game is designed around the idea of having a bunch of small, profitable cities with little to no buildings. The designers stated in interviews that they intended to have a bunch of small, well-developed empires, then proceeded to attempt to punish the player for developing his empire.

Small cities built "just for gold" support other cities to such an extent that it's demonstrably better from both the research and gold vantage point to skip the large cities and their infrastructure entirely.

The production costs of most buildings would mitigate this except that gold can buy buildings, therefore the stronger gold approach wins out.

You're getting the wrong idea. The game seems not to be designed around the idea of small, profitable cities without buildings. I get this impression because it appears too easy to do and both the science and the gold metrics are at least an order of magnitude off.

I did NOT say that in order to have large, developed cities, that you require such small cities. You're filling in "He's talking about using ICS cities," where I didn't say so. It's a natural assumption I suppose so I apologize for not clarifying further.

Cities with large populations have significant Trade Route returns, so large cities focused on Specialists and Production aren't complete dead weights. A city focused on gold isn't necessarily small and undeveloped. It can be sizable and work multiple tiles with multiple buildings. In fact, I'd say it would require multiple buildings to be most profitable on a per-city basis.

If you want just one or two Gold cities to support your empire costs and turn a profit, they will need to be of a significant size.

If your point wasn't that it would be built everywhere, then what's the problem? It just goes in the queue and never gets built?

I'll try to explain it another way: there is no strategy in deciding whether or not to build a building if it's a forgone conclusion that there is no cost to having it up and running. You always want it if you can spare the hammers.

 

[DaveGold]

Cities with large populations have significant Trade Route returns, so large cities focused on Specialists and Production aren't complete dead weights.

With more cities you can build more coliseums/theatres and get more population and grow people faster and get more gross trade route income. Developing fewer + larger cities, especially a big capital, gives you comparatively lower trade route returns. In CIV5 you frequently have to look at the maths and not rely on your intuition.

 

[Roxlimn]

DaveGold:

Trade Route returns are based on population. It doesn't matter where it is. Small cities don't return Trade Routes better - they just do it faster because of the growth curve. Developing fewer, larger cities gets you better trade route returns provided that the populations are equivalent.

As for intuition - well, I'm told that I don't have any. I actually have to rely on math for things that other people use their intuition to figure out. My intuition IS math. I don't have anything beyond it.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Bandobras Took:



Don't need 6 riverside Grassland Farms. This is what I talk about when I say that math misleads people into thinking the wrong conclusions. The center tile has two food to start, so it pays for the first pop point and two tiles. Granary pays for another, Watermill another, and still more from Maritime food. Eight Plains tiles also supplies 8 food.

Cool, forgot the plains tiles. The Granaries and Watermills add more hammer cost and more maintenance. Maritime Food costs you gold and may not exist. Remember, we're trying to support another city with this just gold city.

Off the top of my head, with 2 food from center, 4 from buildings and 8 from Plains, you only need 10 food from Maritimes to break even on food (about 3 from Industrial onwards in non-capital cities).

The food from Maritimes is an issue. The whole point is to support the upkeep. If I'm spending gold on Maritimes, I'm adding upkeep, not reducing it.

I think you ought to be less invested in proving me wrong and more invested in finding ways to make things happen.

And I'd be right with you if you didn't need to generate culture to get those social policies to give you happiness and reduce maintenance. That means that each city you found has to build culture buildings and pay their maintenance in order to reduce their maintenance, which may cover the cost of putting up the culture buildings in the first place.

PS: markets, banks, and stock exchanges definitely multiply before maintenance. There are also SPs that reduce maintenance.

At least they did that part right.

You're getting the wrong idea. The game seems not to be designed around the idea of small, profitable cities without buildings. I get this impression because it appears too easy to do and both the science and the gold metrics are at least an order of magnitude off.

Say rather, the game was not intended to be designed around small profitable cities without buildings. But that is the direction that front-loaded building trees take the game. Cities with no effective cost other than social policies will always outweigh cities that drag your economy and happiness down.

I do not use such small, profitable cities. I bought this game because I read that the designers intended to favor large, well-developed cities. That's what they thought they were doing. That is not what they actually did.

I did NOT say that in order to have large, developed cities, that you require such small cities. You're filling in "He's talking about using ICS cities," where I didn't say so. It's a natural assumption I suppose so I apologize for not clarifying further.

You said "devote more cities to just doing gold." It's not ICS, but I'll run out of valid space to put those cities -- the more of those cities I have to build, the more it approaches ICS. My contention is not that the game forces you to ICS. I use the alternative. I'm not saying that ICS is bad. I am saying that the way they have handled buildings in this game is not the way to go about their stated goal of encouraging large, well-developed cities. The front-loaded building trees, the ability to rush-buy buildings, and the economic penalties associated with all buildings, but especially the end-tree buildings, all encourage away from developing those cities.

Cities with large populations have significant Trade Route returns, so large cities focused on Specialists and Production aren't complete dead weights. A city focused on gold isn't necessarily small and undeveloped. It can be sizable and work multiple tiles with multiple buildings. In fact, I'd say it would require multiple buildings to be most profitable on a per-city basis.

Depending on when those multiple buildings come into play. You have to expand the tiles enough for them to work and provide the happiness via buildings and social policies, not to mention a war or two, in all likelihood. And that's assuming that tile expansion occurs in just the manner you desire -- a lack of access to food at the appropriate point stunts your growth. Add in the hospitals, and your maintenance just keeps climbing. The trade routes do provide a significant return, but you're paying maintenance on those, too -- the more so for the cities being as far apart as they need to be to really grow.

If you want just one or two Gold cities to support your empire costs and turn a profit, they will need to be of a significant size.

And if such a route were demonstrably as profitable or more profitable overall than the "lots of small cities" approach, I would applaud the designers on a job well done. But the fact that such a city, whose purpose is to improve your economy, takes at least 22 maintenance (roughly -- probably more because of situational requirements) each turn still feels like a slap in the face to city development.

I'll try to explain it another way: there is no strategy in deciding whether or not to build a building if it's a foregone conclusion that there is no cost to having it up and running. You always want it if you can spare the hammers.

You keep expressing the point I'm trying to make. If there's already a limiting factor (sparing the hammers, time), why introduce another one (maintenance) to make up for the fact that you provided a completely unnecessary shortcut (building rushbuy)? Do you claim there is no strategy in finding spare hammers -- in deciding how to best use the hammers a city can generate over the time limit of the game? This in the same thread where you talk about how to make sure that Workshops are effective?

 

[DaveGold]

Trade Route returns are based on population. It doesn't matter where it is. Small cities don't return Trade Routes better - they just do it faster because of the growth curve. Developing fewer, larger cities gets you better trade route returns provided that the populations are equivalent.

The populations are not equivalent. That is exactly the point. More cities means more coliseums, more theatres, more population, more trade route income, more research. It is an illusion that big city populations can afford more infrastructure through higher national trade route income.

The efficiency needed in big cities is the type provided by a seaport where one seaport covering three fish is better than three seaports in three cities covering a fish each.

 

[Roxlimn]

Cool, forgot the plains tiles. The Granaries and Watermills add more hammer cost and more maintenance. Maritime Food costs you gold and may not exist. Remember, we're trying to support another city with this just gold city.

The Maritime bonuses are typically already there for your main cities. Putting down another city that benefits from the Maritimes also doesn't materially add to the food cost you're already paying. They may not be available, and that changes the math. However, this was just for the sake of illustration. Typically, gold cities are also sited on rivers to multiply the additional tile gold income.

The food from Maritimes is an issue. The whole point is to support the upkeep. If I'm spending gold on Maritimes, I'm adding upkeep, not reducing it.

You're not spending additional gold on Maritimes for the city. You're already paying for it even without the Gold City.

And I'd be right with you if you didn't need to generate culture to get those social policies to give you happiness and reduce maintenance. That means that each city you found has to build culture buildings and pay their maintenance in order to reduce their maintenance, which may cover the cost of putting up the culture buildings in the first place.

Actually the Policies that reduce maintenance are quite potent. It really depends on how early you want to get it. If you're aiming for lots of buildings with lots of maintenance, it makes sense to get those policies. Culture generation is not optional. Cities over size 6 need culture generation to claim tiles.

Say rather, the game was not intended to be designed around small profitable cities without buildings. But that is the direction that front-loaded building trees take the game. Cities with no effective cost other than social policies will always outweigh cities that drag your economy and happiness down.

I do not use such small, profitable cities. I bought this game because I read that the designers intended to favor large, well-developed cities. That's what they thought they were doing. That is not what they actually did.

True enough. The tendency to favor small cities is inherent in Civ design. This tendency was present in all previous Civs, including Civ 4. Civ4's control for it was moving building maintenance to city maintenance. A bit brutish and it had unintended consequences, and it was only barely effective. It was still optimal to overlap city tiles in Civ 4 (this points to a trend going towards ICS), sometimes quite drastically. With TGLH, you're moving towards full-blown ICS.

Say rather, that Civ V's intended counter-mechanism against ICS is currently ineffective.

Front loadedness is inherent in Civ design because of how the game progresses. Small cities cannot afford 1000 food to get to the next population. Earlier buildings have to be more efficient, or small Civs can't afford them and grow into bigger Civs. At the same time, latter buildings can't be more efficient than earlier buildings or it just snowballs into ridiculousness.

You said "devote more cities to just doing gold." It's not ICS, but I'll run out of valid space to put those cities -- the more of those cities I have to build, the more it approaches ICS. My contention is not that the game forces you to ICS. I use the alternative. I'm not saying that ICS is bad. I am saying that the way they have handled buildings in this game is not the way to go about their stated goal of encouraging large, well-developed cities. The front-loaded building trees, the ability to rush-buy buildings, and the economic penalties associated with all buildings, but especially the end-tree buildings, all encourage away from developing those cities.

Yes. Unfortunately, those are all necessary to Civ design. It's been that way since time immemorial. Even in vaunted Civ4, earlier buildings are cheap, extremely efficient, and powerful (see: Granary).

Depending on when those multiple buildings come into play. You have to expand the tiles enough for them to work and provide the happiness via buildings and social policies, not to mention a war or two, in all likelihood. And that's assuming that tile expansion occurs in just the manner you desire -- a lack of access to food at the appropriate point stunts your growth. Add in the hospitals, and your maintenance just keeps climbing. The trade routes do provide a significant return, but you're paying maintenance on those, too -- the more so for the cities being as far apart as they need to be to really grow.

The tile expansion algorithm is predictable. Therefore, it is possible to site the city so that the initial tiles claim the expensive ones, and the city naturally and quickly expands along the flats.

Lack of access to food stunts growth, but that just means we need to manage that better.

The maintenance is manageable. I don't know how else to explain it. Cities that focus on growth don't need much tiles. Mainly, they need food and production. Gold Cities will be focusing more on tiles, but it really depends on the game state.

Let's not lose sight of our point here. It is possible to create profitable Gold Cities, make them big, and have them return good gold.

And if such a route were demonstrably as profitable or more profitable overall than the "lots of small cities" approach, I would applaud the designers on a job well done. But the fact that such a city, whose purpose is to improve your economy, takes at least 22 maintenance (roughly -- probably more because of situational requirements) each turn still feels like a slap in the face to city development.

I think you're exaggerating and misassigning factors. A Theatre + Colosseum matches Colosseum + Colosseum with only a 1 gold premium on maintenance. In return, the population in question requires less road (since you don't need to connect another city), it benefits equally from less Libraries, Universities, Markets, and Banks, and so on. Just having two Libraries in two cities offsets the maintenance premium already.

The key factor here is growth, and no, it's not the Maritimes. It's Civ. The Maritimes (and the Corporations before them, if you must know) just exacerbate the tendency. In Civ, smaller cities have smaller food boxes. Always have been. This means that all things being equal, two size 1 cities grow population twice as fast as a single size 2 city. In order to equalize this tendency, we must stipulate that city growth is logarithmically faster - that is, a size 2 city must grow twice as fast as a size 1, and a size 16 twice as fast as a size 8.

This is why smaller cities are more profitable - it's not the buildings. It's Civ.

You keep expressing the point I'm trying to make. If there's already a limiting factor (sparing the hammers, time), why introduce another one (maintenance) to make up for the fact that you provided a completely unnecessary shortcut (building rushbuy)? Do you claim there is no strategy in finding spare hammers -- in deciding how to best use the hammers a city can generate over the time limit of the game? This in the same thread where you talk about how to make sure that Workshops are effective?

I am so failing to get that point across. I don't know how else to express it. My apologies.

 

[Roxlimn]

The populations are not equivalent. That is exactly the point. More cities means more coliseums, more theatres, more population, more trade route income, more research. It is an illusion that big city populations can afford more infrastructure through higher national trade route income.

The efficiency needed in big cities is the type provided by a seaport where one seaport covering three fish is better than three seaports in three cities covering a fish each.

You're making an incorrect assumption. You're assuming that just because I'm not limiting the growth of my big cities, it means that I'm skimping on small city expansion. This is not necessarily the case, and it's well outside the realm of building discussion.

It is possible to grow vertically and laterally at the same time. Arguably, the ideal situation is to ride the growth curve of ICS while also not restricting the growth of the core cities with happiness (ie, they will only be limited by food). This is why ICS is actually not the best way to play Civ. Modified ICS is better because it concentrates hammers better without sacrificing gold or science to ICS.

Concentrating population in cities is already more efficient than otherwise. It is one of the forces for big cities in Civ. One Library in a size 16 is twice as efficient as two in two size 8s. The difference that makes ICS better is in rate of growth, not in the buildings.

PS: Not in the buildings in general. Insofar as Colosseums and Theatres act to directly counter the only barrier to ICS, they are direct factors in its favor as they currently are.

 

[DaveGold]

You're making an incorrect assumption. You're assuming that just because I'm not limiting the growth of my big cities, it means that I'm skimping on small city expansion. This is not necessarily the case, and it's well outside the realm of building discussion.

This is getting nonsensical, sorry. I was replying to this.

Developing fewer, larger cities gets you better trade route returns provided that the populations are equivalent.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Concentrating population in cities is already more efficient than otherwise. It is one of the forces for big cities in Civ. One Library in a size 16 is twice as efficient as two in two size 8s. The difference that makes ICS better is in rate of growth, not in the buildings.

You're forgetting about specialists. Consider the following example:

- Build a Library and a University, then fill it, in a size 8 city under Secularism
- Same scenario in a city of size 16

The size 8 city produces (8 X 1.5 + 15)* X 1.5 = 27 X 1.5 = 40.5 Science
The size 16 city produces (16 X 1.5 + 15) * 1.5 = 39 X 1.5 = 58.5 Science

This math only gets more amazing as city sizes get smaller. The engine that made the sub-200 Deity Spaceship go is the ability to wring 31.5 Science out of a size 4 city with just a Library, a University and two Maritime allies for Food. Not to mention that you get +2 Happy from Freedom running three Scientists. And that still doesn't account for the extra Great Scientists that building another city and filling it with specialists will earn you.

It's the buildings, not growth rate. You can grow to a decent size reasonably. The problem with growth is that getting much past size 10 isn't feasible. It's in the cost to grow large cities where things need to change.

 

[Bandobras Took]

And I'd still call that an argument for moving the specialist slots from the library to the far more appropriate Public Schools.

@ Roxlimn: As we do indeed seem to be talking past each other, I'll only mention that I can handle maintenance. I just think it detracts, not adds, to the game to have to.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Minor Update: The Museum actually has two specialist slots.

 

[fed1943]

ICS, like any other approach, should be neither better nor worse than its opposite.

IMHO, ICS is the best strategy (while it annoys me because I do not like overlapping) due to the
mechanics of the food basket.
It would be different if it was X food to grow from 1 to 2, then the food needed to previous grow+
Y, being Y a constant.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Interesting note from the patch thread:

# Library now has no specialist slots.
# Wat now has two specialist slots.
# Public school now has 1 Science per pop, +1 free Great Scientist point, +1 Culture for 3 gold maintenance.
# Observatory now has 1 specialist slot.
# Research Lab has two specialist slots.
# Public school now provides 1 beaker per pop for 3 gold maintenance.

You heard it here first.

I'll wait for the patch to verify things in-game before updating the document, though.