Concern about districts

[Magil]

The science penalty was hardly the big change. In early version of Civ V libraries gave 2 scientists, coliseums gave like 4-5 global happines, trade post gave 2 gold and so on and all of these was probably more important why ICS was so common in early version of civilization V.

Even in the 100 turn limit demo people regularly produced over 100 science and had huge gold income so they could rushbuy the library and the coliseum and at that time a city with just a coliseum was net positive to your happines as not only did it give more but the happines it gave was global. Great scientists and research agreements researched whole techs during that time which allowed for some extreamly powerful beelines and the more liberies you had the quicker you could get the great scientists out which favored wide not to talk about all science whose library scientists themself produced.

You will note that they removed scientists from the library in an early Civ V patch yet the strategy remained the same. Not sure what you're even arguing here though.

Neither are similarly timed Tradition play. Look, both get the same results in good condition. The point is that it's not slower in tech. Especially with hapiness outside the equation (since that is kind of the requirement to make it work right now).

This is not a outlier only thing dude. I have shown multiple times in civ5 that wide is viable and competitive with enough room and happiness. Other good players have done so. Look at tsg 111 or tsg 122 if you wish extra examples. Ribannah has won multiple first rank gotm always going wide.

If you still think it's slower in tech I'm not sure what to say.

You say it's not an outlier only thing, yet you keep using Hall of Fame/Game of the Month games as examples...

I would never assert that settling more than 4 cities was totally nonviable in V. Simply that the balance is off, and it requires substantially more to go right and a much higher level of skill. You yourself admit this in your Wide Liberty Guide (which yes, I have read in the past and followed).

The reason that "game length" is a concern as you note in your early post is largely because of the science penalty, as additional cities will slow you down without enough time to develop them to offset that. But I would not deny that it could be offset.

 

[Acken]

I use them because they are available. I can talk about all the game I've played but how are you going to check those ?

You seem to otherwise have lost track of where the disagreement is. Your claim was that going wide would make science victory a slog. This is false.

 

[Magil]

You seem to otherwise have lost track of where the disagreement is. Your claim was that going wide would make science victory a slog. This is false.

I'll concede the point that I don't have much experience with going wide and pursuing science, as it always seemed easier and quicker to do something else. Maybe a handful of games at most. Perhaps it is not as bad I thought. I find the science victory in general a slog for V (I tend to play on marathon or epic), so my view on that matter is clearly skewed.

 

[Acken]

And your exactly right that the penalty has a strong effect but imo it stops late expansion rather than expansion in general. It is the same reason why tradition has trouble justifying going over 4 cities after the NC as Liberty has trouble justifying a 9th city.

The science penalty creates some kind of time threshold rather than an empire size threshold.

If we remove all other penalities and give you free settlers it would be a good idea to spam cities before that threshold.

On the other hand hapiness is a limiter on empire size. If you make too many cities you're screwed. But as you noted hapiness can be overcome but then we are beyond the time threshold. Which in the end the reason why its not very useful to find what penalty is the worst as all of them are interacting with each others and with game time.

For example, a nerf to science directly makes the tech penalty less of an issue.



All that being said, Civ6 goes with a very different system. The most worrisome aspect so far though is that the game seems even faster than civ5...