bitula:
Now for you to better understand. If you play with say 5 or 6 - which really means that your whole civilization has altogather such a small amount of units - units the problem is minor, so I do not disagree with you on that the game is most enjoyable when playing with a small amount of units. Now for you, it seems this is not a disadvantage, however several people like to amass units and create a large army. But because of (1) this is not possible - its technically ofcourse possible, but inevitably will make the game boring, so you must not do that. And so here I have to repeat, that THIS IS ONLY IN Civ5, Civ1, Alpha Centaury, Civ4 had no such problems, you could build large army and still enjoy playing the game. Now without (2) you must restrict yourself from doing this, which is in itself bad, so (2) in initself doesnt help anything, because its aint better also. Now regarding (2) which is easily curable by any modder, not like (1) which is impossible to cure without the source dll - so again, please note, the main problem is (1), not (2) - you seem not to understand indirect balancing. In case from A follows B from B follows C from C follows D, D also follows from A so you cannot oversimplify balancing by including just direct causes. But again, this is not the point the point is (1).
I highly disagree on nearly every point, because I have a vivid, once photographic memory. I remember playing Civ 1 quite vividly, even now, as well as Civ 2, 3, and 4. There was a time as recently as late Civ 4 before BTS where I was in a discussion where I said that I had upwards of 60+ units and no one believed me.
I distinctly recall a period in CivFanatic history where community sentiment was that Nationhood was a bad Civic. Drafting was used primarily defensively, and it was considered a weak mechanic, on the whole. It was only when mass drafting was more commonly practiced that the true value of Nationhood was more generally appreciated.
As a matter of fact, small numbers of units compared to Civ 4 standards in the norm in Civ type games, not the rule, because early Civ games required you to move the units one at a time, even though they were in a stack.
Civ 5's 6 to 10 unit optimum army size is small for a Civ game, but not that small comparably speaking. It's only small compared to Civ 4, whose hundred units stack are, I would say, themselves a problem.
Again because of existence of indirect balancing explained above you are incorrectly oversimplifying matters. In some cases, you may fix something absolutely seemingly unrelated to make Granary useful without touching the Granary itself.
You could, but it would be a stupid way to go about fixing a Granary problem. If you touch a fundamental mechanic to fix a single building problem, you only compound your problems because you affect everything else!
Fixing a fundamental problem only works if the Granary problem
is just a Sentinel Event, and is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. In the case of 1UPT, unit costing IS the issue. They have to be more expensive because there has to be less of them. You do NOT fix that by adjusting tile outputs, because then you also affect the buildings! And Research! And Growth!
It's stupid to do it that way, and I can't imagine how we can think that Shafer would do something that stupid when it's self-evident to non-game devs like ourselves that if the problem is unit costing, you adjust unit costing, and not tile outputs.
In fact, it's also obvious to me that this is not what happened at all. Buildings are reasonably priced in Civ 5, whereas units have comparatively been jacked in hammer cost.
I think here you completely misunderstand me, the maint point was that within several dimensions of growth of empire Civ5 makes an exception to armies, which in Civ 5 must be intentionally kept small. There was no such thing in other Civ versions mentioned here. Growth of other dimensions may be similar, however I also experienced that building many building is not an advantage, so altogather growth is less encouraged in Civ5 than in other Civs mentioned here, though this latter can be modded whereas the first one (army) cannot because of (1).
You're out of touch with current Civ 5 mechanics. There is no disadvantage whatsoever to building Markets, Banks, and Stock Exchanges, so long as you can afford the hammer cost, as they not only have no maintenance, but supply both base Gold and a Gold multiplier on top.
Lighthouses and Granaries have been buffed to the point where it's plausible to have a Lighthouse or a Granary supplying +8 food for 1 gold, which is very nearly the equivalent output of Hanging Gardens: a super-potent growth Wonder. City Growth has been evened out by the Aqueduct, which retains 40% food after city growth and is available from the Classical Era tech Engineering.
Between the more generous gold outputs and the increased growth, it becomes more and more desirable to pass the happiness/growth curve by supplementing tech, wonders, and policies with buildings such as Colosseums and Theatres and Circuses.
And to build all that essential infrastructure, you will want production boosting buildings, which aid production-rich site with production multipliers, but also aid production poor sites with base hammers.
Finally, lower tier buildings are no longer the most powerful buildings available. It is desirable to at least get to Universities because those contain the first Specialist slots.
So how now, having built all this considerable architecture, can we possibly say that it's not desirable to have many buildings? This doesn't even take account for Culture buildings, which you will want to build so as to expand your city to at least the second ring fully - a necessity since Cities can no longer be built less than 3 hexes apart.