City Limitations via Civics

[Koshling]

I'm sorry you don't like me any more.

I could learn to live with nevets idea, but I still see problems even with it. The Whole City Limits idea is based on a flawed perception that everyone will "Spam" cities. For some ppl the eXcitement of the game is in the eXploration and founding of new cities to get those coveted resources before your neighbor does. While other players want to sit still and build military units to go a raiding on their neighbors and acquire cities and resources. It's a matter of play style. The ppl that cry foul over rapid expansion are these that like to sit back and amass Stacks of Doom. I'm not one of those type players. So when you start regulating that my style is bad and yours is better, well disagreement comes into play. Not balance for the game but just plain disagreement. This has been an ages old argument and point of dissension since I started playing RoM back in '07. Luckily I was able to persuade Zappara to make REVDCM an Option for RoM so that both sides could have Zappara's cake and eat it too. Then Afforess came along and almost persuaded Zappara to make REVDCM THE Basis for RoM. In fact he even declared in one post that is was RoM basis. I argued against that too and almost lost. Afforess is a very persuasive talented modder and Zappara was leaning in his direction because of all the new ideas Afforess was coming up with. I was finally able to get Zappara and Afforess to understand the need to keep it as an option.

Now we are here at C2C, the grandchild of RoM and the son of AND and history is trying to repeat itself. I'll argue against City Limits as a mandatory item till "I'm Blue in the Face" as they say where I come from. It makes me unpopular and a seemingly antagonistic player. But I feel strongly that I must stand my ground. Or I will lose my options and this Wonderful Mod will become unplayable for me because the fun I'm having is being restricted and removed. I went thru this also with AND and was ostracized by many Afforess supporters. I actually quit playing AND. Later Afforess and I talked and he admitted that he had lost sight of his long term goals for the Mod and let himself be pulled away from his Goal. And that because of the loss of Focus his mod had become to "predictable" and the Fun was slipping away. He's trying to rectify and simplify his mod now to get that Fun back in it.

Now I've said all that to end up saying let's just make sure that the Mod stays focused and balanced and most of all Fun for the Max number of players. Don't restrict different modes of play to the point of eXclusion. There will always be dissenters and I may be just one of them.

I Greatly Respect your work on this Mod Koshling. You have improved it by leaps and bounds. Just don't cut me out of it.

I hope you understand me better with this post.

JosEPh

In the interests of burying the hatchet here is what I am going to do (with Strategyonly's permission):

1. Implement nevet's suggestion to make the city limits softer
2. Make the whole city limit thing a game option

There isn't actually too much AI overhead associated with the limits anyway, so it shouldn't be a major issue (much less actually than, say REV is anyway)

 

[EldrinFal]

Because I'm not spamming cities. Had I the cost would have been too much. Basically I check my economy before setting any new cities and once I switch civics (from Anarchy to Chiefdom to Despotism to Monarchy and finally to Republic) I find my economy stable enough to put out a few more cities. Usually between 2 and 4 with the extra gold income, more once I've gone Republic.

I was talking about specialist merchants, not Great Merchants or Early Merchants.

In the very early game I think that could work since money is tighter. But it doesn't seem to take long before money is fairly available. In my game now I'm in the early industrial age and making just under 1000 gold per turn (profit) and that's with about a dozen cities. I wonder what Maintenance would have to be to bring that to 0?

But you are right that there are other means to curb city spawning.

 

[BlueGenie]

Joseph & Koshling: Making arbitrary city limits an Option is good, no matter how they are imposed.
I agree with Joseph: there are different kinds of players. Joseph just wrote it a lot better than I ever could. *smile* We all have different playing styles and are at different stages in our Civ Fanatic Stage. Attempting to remove some exploits shouldn't result in a total change in game-play. I, for instance, remove the city limits manually because I can and really dislike them being in place the way they are. Like for Joseph it's a deal-breaker for me.

I do find that the main problem, the real problem, isn't the amount of cities. That's just a side symptom of the underlying cause: it's too easy to run a good economy with 100% science. Simply loads of easily accessibly +gold buildings that end up paying for maintenance of cities, Civics, and Inflation as well as some extra for units and profit. I still argue that with more income costs should increase too. Mainly maintenance but possibly also Civic costs. Increase those and there's no spamming of huge cities in any government form at all while still allowing for the small cities "spamming" tactic to work.


Eldrin: Isn't it the very early (up to beginning of Classic) game the city limits are set already? Once at Democracy Tech you can lose the city limits completely and it's around then that your economy finally starts to stabilize.


Cheers

 

[EldrinFal]

I do find that the main problem, the real problem, isn't the amount of cities. That's just a side symptom of the underlying cause: it's too easy to run a good economy with 100% science. Simply loads of easily accessibly +gold buildings that end up paying for maintenance of cities, Civics, and Inflation as well as some extra for units and profit. I still argue that with more income costs should increase too. Mainly maintenance but possibly also Civic costs. Increase those and there's no spamming of huge cities in any government form at all while still allowing for the small cities "spamming" tactic to work.


Eldrin: Isn't it the very early (up to beginning of Classic) game the city limits are set already? Once at Democracy Tech you can lose the city limits completely and it's around then that your economy finally starts to stabilize.
Cheers

I have definitely found that money is very much on the plus side during the mid to late game.

Well they are in v16 and earlier, but it looks like that will be phasing out in favor of Nevets idea-- and even that might just be an optional thing. We were talking about another alternative to that though.

I think if the AI can deal with the REV mod properly, that is the most accurate means of monitoring "city spam." And distance from the seat of power should be one of the biggest factors in a cause for revolt, right along with health and happiness.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Now we are here at C2C, the grandchild of RoM and the son of AND ...

Never though about it that way. I suppose that makes you the godfather of C2C.

In the interests of burying the hatchet here is what I am going to do (with Strategyonly's permission):

1. Implement nevet's suggestion to make the city limits softer
2. Make the whole city limit thing a game option

There isn't actually too much AI overhead associated with the limits anyway, so it shouldn't be a major issue (much less actually than, say REV is anyway)

I like choice #2 but am wary of choice #1. It need to either be really balanced or just leave the game default without the games and anyone who wants city limits can just do the game option.

I do find that the main problem, the real problem, isn't the amount of cities. That's just a side symptom of the underlying cause: it's too easy to run a good economy with 100% science. Simply loads of easily accessibly +gold buildings that end up paying for maintenance of cities, Civics, and Inflation as well as some extra for units and profit. I still argue that with more income costs should increase too. Mainly maintenance but possibly also Civic costs. Increase those and there's no spamming of huge cities in any government form at all while still allowing for the small cities "spamming" tactic to work.

Yeah too much gold is still a problem. Even with the new law buildings I am making that will drain some gold we still have an abundance of gold. I was hoping that Thunderbrd would have been on this problem by now but he apparently has been busy with other things. I will probably have to go in myself and re-tweak the buildings so gold is harder to come by. Or at least used by other buildings. See the C2C - Maintenance Adjustments for more info on that.

 

[AIAndy]

What about making espionage missions easier against an empire with a large number of cities and especially in cities that are far from the seat of power?
Like a percentage bonus depending on number of cities, distance to capital, techs and civics.
Later techs would increase the number of cities before the percentage increases seriously.
So no real limit to the number of cities but you pay the price of spy vulnerability if you go for a lot.

 

[strategyonly]

In the interests of burying the hatchet here is what I am going to do (with Strategyonly's permission):

1. Implement nevet's suggestion to make the city limits softer
2. Make the whole city limit thing a game option

There isn't actually too much AI overhead associated with the limits anyway, so it shouldn't be a major issue (much less actually than, say REV is anyway)

I believe the more OPTIONs the better, so have at it. Look the way the new BUG team did with more options, i like that alot better.

One thing i want to do alot later down the road is to have POP-UPs, then which one you choose will take you in a different direction by the choices you make. Dont know how to do this, but sounds good.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

What about making espionage missions easier against an empire with a large number of cities and especially in cities that are far from the seat of power?
Like a percentage bonus depending on number of cities, distance to capital, techs and civics.
Later techs would increase the number of cities before the percentage increases seriously.
So no real limit to the number of cities but you pay the price of spy vulnerability if you go for a lot.

Interesting idea. How would the Forbidden Palace and other govt centers fit in?

 

[BlueGenie]

Doesn't work right now (v16, not SVN) as currently Espionage is whacked. AI builds all the - buildings. So far they have amassed a total of 0 points against me.

 

[Koshling]

Just pushed to SVN - city limits are now soft limits using something based on Nevet's suggestion. They will also become a game option shortly (but not in this push).

The civic schema now takes two values:

iCityLimit - numeric value at which the limit starts to take effect

iCityOverLimitUnhappy - number of unhappy people in every city for each city over the current limit

If iCityLimit is present but iCityOverLimitUnhappy is absent (or 0) the limit is an old-style hard limit. If iCityOverLimitUnhappy is present and positive it's a soft limit a la Nevet.

Current values in this push (which are placeholders really for adjustment as we see fit) are:

Anarchism - limit 3, penalty 3 unhappy per city over the limit in all cities
Chiefdom - limit 6, penalty 3
Despotism - limit 10, penalty 2
Monarchy - limit 15, penalty 1
Republic - limit 20, penalty 1
Democracy+ - no limits

I have also adjusted the AI to understand city limits (both the old hard kind and the new softer limits), and adjusted the generated game text for civic help and unhappines hover in the city screen (I think those are the only two that need to reflect this). Let me know if you see bad or needs-adjusting text anywhere, or poor AI response.

Game option to turn it all off will follow in the next day or so.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Koshling wrote:

I have also adjusted the AI to understand city limits (both the old hard kind and the new softer limits), and adjusted the generated game text for civic help and unhappines hover in the city screen (I think those are the only two that need to reflect this).

This is the key for City Limits to actually work imho. I'm curious to test it.

I'd still like to see no limit on Republic because I like to use Republic for the whole game after I have discovered it. Climat suggested I use Monarchy for War to reduce WW. But the lost benefits to how I play do not fit well with Reverting back to Monarchy.

Plus if it's coded that if I have 20 cities est. with Repub and try to go back to Monarchy what will that do to my empire as Mon. only supports 15 cities? Cause a Crash? Remember I don't use REV so they wouldn't revolt either.

If I didn't play Huge, Giant, and Gigantic Maps I suppose this wouldn't be much of a problem. But I do and in the last 3 versions late middle game (Industrial Era) I may have 25-30 cities with at least 1 AI very close to me in City numbers. I can have this many (and the AI too) because of the size of the map and the Limited # of AI I set up at game start. (I rarely go over 10 AI anymore). And as I don't normally use BarbCiv (again because it introduces too many new AI into the game and for sometime had "problems") this method allows my AI opponents the opportunity to develop and become Strong and Developed Late Game Challengers.

But since I'm SVN handicapped I'll have to wait.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Koshling wrote:



This is the key for City Limits to actually work imho. I'm curious to test it.

I'd still like to see no limit on Republic because I like to use Republic for the whole game after I have discovered it. Climat suggested I use Monarchy for War to reduce WW. But the lost benefits to how I play do not fit well with Reverting back to Monarchy.

Plus if it's coded that if I have 20 cities est. with Repub and try to go back to Monarchy what will that do to my empire as Mon. only supports 15 cities? Cause a Crash? Remember I don't use REV so they wouldn't revolt either.

If I didn't play Huge, Giant, and Gigantic Maps I suppose this wouldn't be much of a problem. But I do and in the last 3 versions late middle game (Industrial Era) I may have 25-30 cities with at least 1 AI very close to me in City numbers. I can have this many (and the AI too) because of the size of the map and the Limited # of AI I set up at game start. (I rarely go over 10 AI anymore). And as I don't normally use BarbCiv (again because it introduces too many new AI into the game and for sometime had "problems") this method allows my AI opponents the opportunity to develop and become Strong and Developed Late Game Challengers.

But since I'm SVN handicapped I'll have to wait.

JosEPh

Any limits soft or hard should scale for map size IMO.

 

[Koshling]

Any limits soft or hard should scale for map size IMO.

If you recall I did an experimental version about a month ago that scaled the limits based on map area divided by num starting civs (so area per civ), but it gave slightly weird results due to the default civ count scaling a bit oddly with map size. That code is still there if we choose activate it, but my own opinion is at it's more trouble than it's worth in extra confusion.

 

[Koshling]

Any limits soft or hard should scale for map size IMO.

It's a soft limit so you can have as many cities as you like in any civic, but you'll be subject to the penalty. As an extreme example I switched from democracy in late industrialized era back to anarchism as part of my testing. That cost me 48 unhappy people in each city - not a good idea obviously. However, switching to republic is not bad at all (it was 2 unhappy in my example game, but it'll be one per city over the 20 limit in general, which may well be a lot less than you'd otherwise get from war weariness staying in democracy). Also as I mentioned, the current numbers are more place holds than any real attempt to necessarily claim they are the correct numbers - they will need some tuning I think.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Thanks Koshling for the info and explanation.

JosEPh.

 

[JosEPh_II]

OK try this, make a SEPARATE dll for that for testing purposes only, for JosEph II and me (since "we" never play with Rev on), and let see what happens

I have not had any real time to test this. Although I see that SO has posted positive results from it. My play/test time unfortunately for the next 10 days will be very limited and correspondingly so will my input on this particular change. (I want to retire So Badly, but I can't )

JosEPh

 

[Baradar67]

I've been playing v15 and didn't like the city limits at first but now think they should be a core part of the game.
I would like to see it changed to +1 for 2 largest world sizes and -1 for 2 smallest but it seems to be a little hard to implement.
Another change could be based on the Power civics. +1 for Nobility and Patrician, +3 for bureaucracy, +6 for senate, etc. Not sure if this is easier or same difficulty to implement as world size.

 

[Koshling]

Following yesterday's changes to enhance the city limit mechanics and allow soft limits I have just pushed a new game option to allow you to turn them off if you don't like them.

 

[strategyonly]

Following yesterday's changes to enhance the city limit mechanics and allow soft limits I have just pushed a new game option to allow you to turn them off if you don't like them.

Thx alot, this is an excellent option.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Try this and let me know what happens when you have city limits defined in the XML (it should apply them to the human and the AI but NOT the barbs).

I don't know what else you added to this but the AI is kicking my Behind on Noble! Of the Original AI and Player I rank last. Only the 4 new Civs from the BarbCiv element are ranked below me. I have 7 cities and the AI had 12 to 7 (only 2 had 7 the rest has 12,12, 11, 10, and 9).

I managed to get Shamanism 1st and then Tengrii (I also had a Horse Resource, Whew!). But I lost out badly trying to get Mono. In fact Mono is now getting picked up faster than Poly (see SO the breaking up of the tech tree paths is working). And Buddhism is sucked up right after Mono. This path needs some more attention.

I set this map up as a Giant RoM_lakes Map with 7AI. Barb Civ On. No REV, No Vassals, No Tech Diffusion, NO Inquisitions.

I battled Neanders for sometime while I was still sitting at 3 cities. But eventually pushed them back.

I now have 6 AI that have declared War on me. The Portuguese bribed 4 of them (Mongols, Zulu, Vikings, and Selassie (sp?). Of course Arabia and Spain are minor civs that formed on my borders and the Greeks which just became a Full Civ declared war too! I don't know If I'll survive to Industrial Era.

JosEPh