I appreciate the explanation, thanks.
And I agree completely on the separation between <problem areas> and the attributed cause people like throwing at it. I want these flaws to be discussed in more depth instead of just arbitrarily deciding that one thing is the root cause of it all and following the logic backwards to justify it. Only
then can progress actually be made; irrelevant of Firaxis actually making the ingame changes.
We have a modding community which we're all pretty proud of I think, and ultimately we discuss these things because we
want to, and not because they might eventually make it ingame in some form. That'd be ideal, of course! But it isn't the primary goal when someone makes a thread, in my opinion.
Production is absolutely slower in more recent games. A lot of it has to do with the forbidden subject (Mod's orders), so I'll avoid that (though it does leave me without a way to say "why"). But even the most basic glance at tile yields/production numbers can tell you this. In Civ V, a mine provided +1 production to start. In IV, it provided +2. Both were boosted by later techs, but generally a given tile would always provide more production in IV than in V. In III, it was +2 on a hill/mountain or +1 on flatland. Buildings were mostly a wash between those systems, all providing %-based bonuses to production. Yet, Mechanized Infantry cost 110 production in III, 200 production in IV, 375 production in V and a whopping 660 production in VI.
Now, VI has tile yields that compare to III/IV's due to quicker upgrades (mines getting improved yields with Apprenticeship and Industrialization, IV's comes at +1 with a railroad on the tile), but its buildings do not provide %-based modifiers unlike in III/IV/V. Trade routes help, but enough to make up for more than 3x the cost? I don't think so. III's was the lowest of all, but some production would be lost to corruption so it's hard to directly compare (though there were plenty of ways to eliminate or reduce corruption). In Civ III, a factory provides 50% production in the city, doubled by a power plant. In IV, it's 25%, and again doubled with power (IV had very powerful resource tiles that had higher base yields than were found in III, so the actual production numbers are closer than it seems at first). In V, factories provide only 15%, and nuclear/solar plants also provide 15%, with the weakest tile yields out of the three. VI again has powerful tiles, but no %-based modifiers on factories. Now, in VI, you can overlap factory/power plant zones to significantly ease production woes, and this should be acknowledged. I personally think it's problematic because in order to get a decent rate of production you need Industrial Zones/Commercial Hubs everywhere (assuming we're not going into a gold-based buy everything strategy, which can be accomplished along with trade routes), which leads to a stale, singular playstyle, but it does work. As long as you do that very specific thing. Otherwise, it doesn't really even out.
Next, consider resources. In III, iron provided a simple +1 production. In IV, it provided +1, but that increased by +3 with a mine (so a flat grassland mine would be 2f4p). Most resources follow this pattern, receiving large buffs when improved in IV, which explains why stuff costs more in IV compared to III--cities with production resources are specialized towards production in a big way. V returned to "the old way" of a simple +1 bonus from an iron resource, though the Forge could provide additional production if you invested in it (of course, that additional production comes at an up-front 120 production cost that didn't need to be paid in past titles). The end result is that a tile, on average, would always yield more in IV than in V. III and V were similar in yields, but costs were much lower in III and %-based modifiers were much higher. So while V returned to "the old way" in terms of tile yields, it increased costs rather than decreased them. It also made buildings less powerful rather than more powerful.
Does that help any?
