Checking in from the dev team: next update coming later this month!

[AriochIV]

Why do the new resources have to come with narrative events?

I don't think that they "have to," but I believe that existing resources have them, so they would be a normal part of the addition of new resources.

But to be honest, I pay no attention whatsoever to the text in the narrative events. The game has trained me that they are irrelevant, so I just look at the choices of rewards.

 

[Human Crouton]

I don't think that they "have to," but I believe that existing resources have them, so they would be a normal part of the addition of new resources.

But to be honest, I pay no attention whatsoever to the text in the narrative events. The game has trained me that they are irrelevant, so I just look at the choices of rewards.

I don't read them either, which is the least of several reasons I want them gone.

 

[pmarc]

I'd put it in a more simple way: The growth curve of required food for consecutive growth events is simply too steep now, while food itself stays relatively linear - so a food-heavy strategy will inevitably reach a point where your food becomes less useful than production (which doesn't face the same scaling problem).

The effectiveness of turning towns into cities follows from that in a way, but the calculation is a bit more complicated for that. There was a long and meandering thread about that somewhere.

This thread? https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...her-growth-rate-more-expensive-cities.696796/

It doesn't seem like there was a consensus. The fact that every settlement is *at some point* more useful as a city is not enough, you have to show that this point occurs within a relevant timeframe for that age. In particular the benefits of food (growth events, specialists) are ageless, whereas city infrastructure has to be rebuild and (unless you take economic golden age) the gold for conversion has to be repaid.

 

[Taefin]

This thread? https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...her-growth-rate-more-expensive-cities.696796/

It doesn't seem like there was a consensus. The fact that every settlement is *at some point* more useful as a city is not enough, you have to show that this point occurs within a relevant timeframe for that age. In particular the benefits of food (growth events, specialists) are ageless, whereas city infrastructure has to be rebuild and (unless you take economic golden age) the gold for conversion has to be repaid.

I concur. Proof 1) a second city is always worth it. 2) on the last turn of an era, converting a city is not worth it. 3) At some transitional surface defined in terms of turn count, city count, and gold income it switches to becoming not worth another city. I’m sure some play styles and game happenstance can lead to scenarios where this transitional surface is never reached before converting all cities, and it remains optimal to convert the last one, but in most games on a personally challenging difficulty, I haven’t found a way not to reach it.

Regarding a quadratic food curve, the beauty (edit typo) of it will be that the incremental “food for next growth event” should scale linearly (the derivative of a quadratic), and linear boosts to food will keep pace with it. A cubic growth curve has a quadratic increase in “food to next growth event” which starts small but quickly and severely outpaces linear food growth.

This should dramatically increase the utility of towns, since they will be able to pump up specialists in cities. I would be surprised if any playstyles will make “convert all cities” optimal after the patch.

 

[sixty4half]

I may have to start playing on max Disaster level. I'm quite liking Moderate right now. Rivers and Volcanoes end up with insane yields.

 

[bbbt]

I’m actually skeptical of the overall impact. Sure, you may spend some more time exploring, but the overall premise remains the same.

The biggest Exploration game-changers to me would be overhauled religion or non-expansionist ways to generate Treasure Points. One day, maybe.

I'd like to see something like:
- in the exploration era, you automatically get resources from AI cities in the homelands connected by roads/trade network, without having to send a merchant.
- Merchants are required for creating 'overseas' trade routes. Potentially all of which create treasure points to be able to get goods back home to use.

In pains me to no end that Merchants just do the same thing 3 times in the 3 eras, and I basically have to recreate the trade routes every time. I guess they are good for the diplo boost tho.

 

[Tanel]

Is there some analysis behind that consensus though? My experience so far is that if you're going for the legacy paths each age, you need to settle / capture enough towns to get the military path points and the resources for the economic path. As the age progresses you get more gold to convert towns to cities, but the cost increases each time and at some point, when the age is close to an end, you won't have time to develop the new city sufficiently to justify the cost.

So briefly, I doubt it's a good idea to convert most of your towns to cities because at some point, for the cost to upgrade the town and build the infrastructure, you could get more science/culture/production yields faster with a food town and converting that extra food into specialists in one of your cities.

We'll see if the faster growth curve will lead to feeding towns becoming less important to grow cities.

The cost increase is capped at 1000 in all ages. There is a point at the end of the age when it is no longer efficient to convert but that usually comes pretty late and you can have most towns converted to cities by then. And by the end of Exploration age 1000 is pretty low amount and you are capped to 3000 gold on age transition anyway so you have to spend the rest on something.

You hit the 1000 cap on city conversion cost pretty early so I think it needs to be increased.

 

[Taefin]

The cost increase is capped at 1000 in all ages. There is a point at the end of the age when it is no longer efficient to convert but that usually comes pretty late and you can have most towns converted to cities by then. And by the end of Exploration age 1000 is pretty low amount and you are capped to 3000 gold on age transition anyway so you have to spend the rest on something.

I curious how many cities you covert in a typical game in exploration age?

 

[Tanel]

I curious how many cities you covert in a typical game in exploration age?

Everything that is worth converting. Only the island settlements for treasure resources and some settlements that I settled or acquired later in the age won't be converted.

 

[evonannoredars]

The biggest Exploration game-changers to me would be overhauled religion or non-expansionist ways to generate Treasure Points. One day, maybe.

Piracy feels v missing from Exploration imo, a way to do it without having to trigger a war would be great (freely capturable if unescorted? using influence to get ips to capture treasure fleets for you?)

 

[Melkus]

This should dramatically increase the utility of towns, since they will be able to pump up specialists in cities.

It's good that they are going this route before tinkering with town specialization effects or conversion rules (probably better to do that later for fine-tuning).

The knock-on effects of this change will be interesting - there has to be less initial growth especially if you expand rapidly in Antiquity, for instance (or the pacing would go off the rails). So it may feel a bit sluggish early in comparison, take longer to get to resources etc.

The FXS' dev diary seems convinced that it'll help the AI - it certainly will slow down strats relying on early conversion. The thing to look for would be: will tall playing styles have an easier time then, or are the AIs just generally able to pull away faster with their boosts and make it harder on everyone.

 

[Taefin]

The knock-on effects of this change will be interesting - there has to be less initial growth especially if you expand rapidly in Antiquity, for instance (or the pacing would go off the rails). So it may feel a bit sluggish early in comparison, take longer to get to resources etc.

I don’t know that this necessarily means slower initial growth, it could match initial levels while simply accelerating less in cost.

 

[m_mus]

I am really happy to see the raise of the current cap for mp-player count still mentioned as a planned feature for which the introduction of new ressources is part of laying the foundation for.
I will not convince my group of 8 regular players to migrate to Civ7 unless we are able to gather fully here.

 

[Isca Dumnoniorum]

The food and resource changes sound really promising - looking forward to the full notes!

 

[Morgawr]

Anything that helps the AI I am 100% for, so let’s wait and see the growth changes.

This one IMO was unnecessary tho:

“Treasure Resources now provide passive effects (like Empire Resources). We wanted to make sure Treasures feel valuable even outside of generating Treasure Fleets.”

We are already getting

1. Distant land military legacy points from the town
2. Treasure legacy points from the treasure
3. 100 gold per treasure point

I thought that all was PLENTY incentive lol. Now they are adding a 4th benefit

4. Empire resource bonus effect

Why make this even juicier instead of making sure the AI is good at it? I’m afraid it will further widen the gap between AI and human performance in EXP Econ legacy pts. Wish they would focus instead on making sure AI collects treasure points fast. (In my last game my ally was sitting on his fleets)

Anyway, best news would be if they do both - improved AI and this extra incentive- we shall see.

 

[UWHabs]

Anything that helps the AI I am 100% for, so let’s wait and see the growth changes.

This one IMO was unnecessary tho:

“Treasure Resources now provide passive effects (like Empire Resources). We wanted to make sure Treasures feel valuable even outside of generating Treasure Fleets.”

We are already getting

1. Distant land military legacy points from the town
2. Treasure legacy points from the treasure
3. 100 gold per treasure point

I thought that all was PLENTY incentive lol. Now they are adding a 4th benefit

4. Empire resource bonus effect

Why make this even juicier instead of making sure the AI is good at it? I’m afraid it will further widen the gap between AI and human performance in EXP Econ legacy pts. Wish they would focus instead on making sure AI collects treasure points fast. (In my last game my ally was sitting on his fleets)

Anyway, best news would be if they do both - improved AI and this extra incentive- we shall see.

I think a big reason for that is to help the AI too. As it stands now, half the distant lands resources are basically not useful to the civs who start in distant lands, so when the civ in distant lands still gets something passive from them, that will help them out too.

I do agree that if you are getting treasure fleets from them, they don't need to give you passive benefits too. Maybe once they fully split out the resources and make sure that distant lands civs get a full game as well, they can split their yields then.

 

[Morgawr]

I think a big reason for that is to help the AI too. As it stands now, half the distant lands resources are basically not useful to the civs who start in distant lands, so when the civ in distant lands still gets something passive from them, that will help them out too.

Great point I had missed that, you’re right that’s a good thing for the distant lands AI!

 

[Krikkit1]

Anything that helps the AI I am 100% for, so let’s wait and see the growth changes.

This one IMO was unnecessary tho:

“Treasure Resources now provide passive effects (like Empire Resources). We wanted to make sure Treasures feel valuable even outside of generating Treasure Fleets.”

We are already getting

1. Distant land military legacy points from the town
2. Treasure legacy points from the treasure
3. 100 gold per treasure point

I thought that all was PLENTY incentive lol. Now they are adding a 4th benefit

4. Empire resource bonus effect

Why make this even juicier instead of making sure the AI is good at it? I’m afraid it will further widen the gap between AI and human performance in EXP Econ legacy pts. Wish they would focus instead on making sure AI collects treasure points fast. (In my last game my ally was sitting on his fleets)

Anyway, best news would be if they do both - improved AI and this extra incentive- we shall see.

#2 and #3 only apply in a settlement with coastal access. Empire Benefits not only help the DL civs, it also helps any colonizers that want to push into the interior. (or like the AI, are bad at placing their settlements to ensure simultaneous coast and resource access)

 

[Taefin]

Why make this even juicier instead of making sure the AI is good at it? I’m afraid it will further widen the gap between AI and human performance in EXP Econ legacy pts. Wish they would focus instead on making sure AI collects treasure points fast. (In my last game my ally was sitting on his fleets)

Absolutely agree, treasure fleets are the feature of VII most like the game modes of VI, based on units the AI doesn’t even know exist.

For inland resources, it really feels like a harbor should grab all treasure resources of any connected settlement .

But maybe, if AI will never be programmed to return treasure fleets, the exploration legacy should just be to collect X treasure resources, or treasure fleets should automatically travel to a HL settlement the same way a caravan does.

 

[MutilationWave]

or treasure fleets should automatically travel to a HL settlement the same way a caravan does.

I hope not, because the chance for piracy is very cool and fun to pull off.