Civ 5 practically forces you to build cities in high production areas?

[Pep]

Currently, I think Civ 5 encourages you to settle only in high production areas. If not, you end with a city with little production and this highly hurts you when trying to build national wonders.

For example, in a recent game, I soon discovered a 2 tile island with a luxury I hadn't. My dilemma was: should I settle a new city on the island or not?. The city has several sea resources nearby, so that it would reach its full potential after I researched navigation (thanks to seaports). I choosed not to settle the city to be able to build the national wonders in a rasonable time.

My proposed tweak: modify the number of cities with a certain building needed to build a national wonder. For example, require only 3/4 of your cities to have the prerequisite building. This way, if you have 4 cities you only need to construct the building in 3 of them. If you have 3 cities or less, you need to construct the building in all of them.

 

[Sporhund]

You might want to look into the mod "Thal's Balance Changes", among a billion other things, it makes national wonders require 80% of cities to have the building.

 

[Pep]

You might want to look into the mod "Thal's Balance Changes", among a billion other things, it makes national wonders require 80% of cities to have the building.

I'll take a look on it. In fact, I know one of the latest patches was influenced by Thal's mod. I hope the NW tweak would be added in a future official patch.

The only problem I have with mods is that sometimes they change too many things of the vanilla game. I usually prefer small changes.

 

[eris]

Isn't that compensated for by the ability to buy a library or market in a low production city? I know I have used that get by this hurdle in at least one game.

 

[Pep]

Isn't that compensated for by the ability to buy a library or market in a low production city? I know I have used that get by this hurdle in at least one game.

I don't think so. Rush buying a building is usually expensive. And you would need to buy a library, market, colosseum, university, etc. I think it's a better and balanced choice to lessen the number of buildings needed to build a national wonder.

I usually play on Small Continents map, and I don't like exploring the map, finding a small island with a rare luxury and not being able to settle on it due to the delay it would add to construct national wonders.

 

[JoeBas]

It's called a trade off.

Really?

 

[GenjiKhan]

Unless you are playing with Inca,the drawback of settling a city in high production areas is the slower growing of your cities in early eras,when ally a maritime city state is expensive. and the system now is good,because balances small empires advantages over big empires(until industrial era at least).

 

[Pep]

It's called a trade off.

Really?

No, I consider a trade off having to construct a building in almost all your cities and increasing the cost of the national wonder for each city you have. Having to construct it in ALL your cities is a big restriction. With the actual requirements, really your only chance to colonize small islands is letting another Civ to do it and then conquer and puppet it.

 

[JoeBas]

Having to construct it in ALL your cities is a big restriction.

Yes, it is. As it should be.

It sounds like you're advocating with a game that loads, and then from turn 1, has a big, flashing button that says "Pep! Push this to win!", and at any point you can just push it and go to a screen of an old guy talking about how great Pep is, and how his button mashing skills have stood the test of time...

There HAS to be balance, trade-offs and decisions to make in these games - that's what makes them FUN.

 

[Keejus]

I don't think so. Rush buying a building is usually expensive. And you would need to buy a library, market, colosseum, university, etc. I think it's a better and balanced choice to lessen the number of buildings needed to build a national wonder.

Wanting every national wonder is a pretty big order. You can't have it all without making a sacrifice somewhere.

 

[SpearMan153]

I understand the frustration with national wonders, it takes ages for a new city to come on-line, same goes for increased policy costs.

It kind of works because its a trade-off (benefit of expanding vs easier national wonders & policies). But it does result in making the game feel quite restrictive so I don't think the balance is quite right yet.

That said usually when playing an expansionist game, i just end up not building the national wonders and doing just fine so I don't think its that big a deal.

 

[Sporhund]

I'll take a look on it. In fact, I know one of the latest patches was influenced by Thal's mod. I hope the NW tweak would be added in a future official patch.

The only problem I have with mods is that sometimes they change too many things of the vanilla game. I usually prefer small changes.

Ain't just one of the later patches, after having followed Thal's mod for a while, it seems he's more or less making a future CiV, and Firaxis are just trying to catch up

The philosophy behind the mod is trying to balance the game, only adding where vanilla really lacks. Sure, there are a lot of changes, but I have never had more fun with CiV than with the latest version of TBC.

 

[Pep]

Yes, it is. As it should be.

It sounds like you're advocating with a game that loads, and then from turn 1, has a big, flashing button that says "Pep! Push this to win!", and at any point you can just push it and go to a screen of an old guy talking about how great Pep is, and how his button mashing skills have stood the test of time...

There HAS to be balance, trade-offs and decisions to make in these games - that's what makes them FUN.

No, you're wrong. I usually play on emperor to give the AI a chance. I don't like inmortal because part of the fun of early exploring is gone, due to the extra AI units.

In fact, I started a thread several days ago posting AI mistake moves and savegames so that the developers could analyze them and improve the AI. The changes I propose would benefit a human player and also the AIs.

 

[JoeBas]

No, you're wrong..

Yes, I'm right.

You want it all. All of your posts over the last few days, are crying about things that are restricting you from just doing whatever you want.

"Why do national wonders make you have all cities???"
"Why do hydro plants require an aluminum???"
"Why does collective rule only help the capital".

They can all be answered with one word: BALANCE

The game has enough of a challenge challenging high level players as it is. Quit trying to dumb it down even more.

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[Buccaneer]

JoeBas is correct.

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[Pep]

Yes, I'm right.

You want it all. All of your posts over the last few days, are crying about things that are restricting you from just doing whatever you want.

"Why do national wonders make you have all cities???"
"Why do hydro plants require an aluminum???"
"Why does collective rule only help the capital".

They can all be answered with one word: BALANCE

The game has enough of a challenge challenging high level players as it is. Quit trying to dumb it down even more.

I don't think having to construct buildings in all your cities to build a national wonder is necessarily balance. In fact, only 80% of them are required in Thal's Balance mod and I agree with this idea. This mod has inspired the changes in the latest patches, so that now several buildings are valuable. What I want is further development of vanilla Civ 5 so that good ideas are integrated into the game.

I usually play in a builder style. My posts of the last few days are about requirements and issues that IMHO are too strict. I'm not trying to dumb the game, I'm trying to improve it suggesting to relax some requirements, to make the game funnier from a builder's perspective. For example, Hydro plants requiring aluminium makes them too costly to be valuable (unbalanced), so I'm against it.

Anyway, If you want to take a look in Bug Reports subforum, you can help me trying to help the developers to improve the game. I've posted several bugs/issues and you can confirm them (or not) by testing the savegames I've attached.

Also, if the game is sometimes dumb is because of the AI issues. I'm trying to improve AI. Look at this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421947 . I would be very happy if one day this game became a real challenge, even at prince difficulty. I can assure you I'm not trying to dumb it. But, because the AI is not so good, at least let me play it as a builder and have some fun.

 

[chazzycat]

Voted no. This is intentional by design, to give more power to small/tall empires so they can compete. I tend to play wide more often than not, and don't find it too restricting.

 

[Ankh]

I have to agree with JoeBas on this one.

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This mod has inspired the changes in the latest patches

Seriously doubt it

 

[turtlefang]

National wonders seem fine the way they are to me. As others have said, its a trade off. One more city or many cities or focus on national wonders.

The hydro plant requiring aluminum a little different. I'm very lucky if I get two AL mines in my territory and any more close to me in most games. This means I nearly never build the hydro plant - I always opt for the nuclear plant or the solar plant as I usually have more UR than AL. It just makes the hydro plant nearly useless.

As far as the social policies, all of them have a series of trade offs and seem to represent a good balance of minor and major benefits. If you start beefing one tree up, you have to change most of them or one will become the preferred or only approach.

The only thing I would like to see beefed up some are port cities. If you have a port city limited access to hills/plains/special resources, it has virtually no production. Not sure what to suggest, but some improvement where sea tiles could generate 1/2 a production point or something rather than none?

 

[baldfalk]

Honestly speaking, 100% of cities seems far more balanced than 80% for this. I love Balanced Combine and it's got a lot of sound ideas, but in this case I think the official ruleset nailed it in the head (surprise!) - there's a reason why quite a few of the major changes this year have been trying to bring ICS-style play down and boost tall empires. National Wonders are one of the important balance factors.

It's not like you can't with a bigger nation. You either have to build them earlier (bar all-Univ), be a lot pickier with your city locations, fork out the gold, or simply just forgo the national wonders. (Come on... other than NC, stuff like +8 production or +5 happiness isn't going to make or break your 20-city continental empire)