Construction vs Research: early game

[mystikx21]

There's also this to consider.

Building|1.12|1.13|+/-
Smith|10%+2|20%+2|+10%
Factory|15%+4|25%+5|+10%+1
Nuclear Plant|15%+5|50%+8|+35%+3
Solar Plant|15%+5|25%+8|+10%+3
Spaceship Factory|25%+3|50%+8|+25%+5
Workshop|15%+2|20%+3|+5%+1
Furnace|15%+0|20%+0|+5%
Warehouse|25%+2|50%+2|+25%
Protectionism|-20%|-25%|+5%
Big Ben|-15%|-25%|+10%

All of those major increases are mid-late-game with the possible exceptions of Protectionism and on warehouses, which only applies to naval units that you could get to early-ish.

An average "production" city late game is going to see at least +35% more production, most likely +60%, plus an extra 4 raw. I don't understand how there can be a research balance question at all here in the late game if we can ramp up production by that much (gold too is up +50%, even if it's reduced on per pop by 1). There is no trade off on research cost at all at that point, there's just "build things slower".

In the early game the question is typically reversed as "build things faster", because they will cost more and almost none of those modifiers will yet apply (you might have furnaces to build units slightly faster, but unit costs stayed the same while buildings went up).

 

[pizzapicante27]

Actually cant you change the wording, as it is I want things to speed up and unit maintenaince to be a litle lower, a few units just crush my economy as it is.

 

[MisterBenn]

I am playing Large, Continents, Epic speed, King difficulty, all default settings apart from that and I voted the balance is good.

I am doing alright, always 2nd or 3rd place and in the Medieval era currently. My cities have never run out of new buildings to build according to their specialisation but they don't lag behind by much. To me the balance is about right in the early game for these settings, perhaps research is ahead of construction but only by a small degree.

I agree with the comment about maintenance, I have a capital configured for gold and I was quite lucky with luxury resources but I can by no means field a large army. I am in a war of attrition to kill the Huns, I have 6 cities, they have just the capital and I built units up to -5 gold per turn and after shared losses I need to build replacements to take the city.

Sorry that's a little anecdotal, hopefully any feedback is useful! I'm in no position to crunch numbers as I just had another go at playing Civ V after getting G&K recently...

 

[Tomice]

We can't compare things to an absolute reference scale like turn numbers, because the game has no absolute frame of reference. It's a lot like space. There's no center of the universe to calculate our position from. It's only possible to compare the relative position of things to each other.

There might not be an absolute reference point, but there are definitively other things to consider in addition to production and research.

There are other time-related factors like:

• unit movement
• tile improvement speed
• time it takes to scout the map
• time it takes to meet most other civs
• desired number of turns to complete the game
• accumulation of culture/faith
• golden age point accumulation

I fully understand you are more limited to adjust production or tile yields in general because they need to be whole numbers, but changing research is definitively not always a good replacement for changing production.
In other words, research can be just fine IMHO even if we run out of stuff to build.


To provide you with something helpful, since I know it's frustrating to be critized without counter-suggestion:
IMO gold purchases are the main factor that needs adjustment. Since I now purchase most high-priority stuff with gold, there's quite often some production left that I can't put to good use. Or, which is used to "de-specialize" cities by for example building science, culture and faith buildings in military production cities. I described the problem in another thread already as you probably have seen.


BTW, I play on large/epic with 1-2 AI's more than usual to aggravate early conflicts. And on Emperor difficulty, although I increasingly think I should play on Immortal. Maybe this would solve some of the problems, and the excess gold is only from the dominance I usually have after the classical era. I'm just not sufficiently frustration-resistant



EDIT: I'm quite surprised the actual poll result goes in another direction. I can't offer any explanation for this

 

[mystikx21]

Agreed gold purchasing needs adjustment most (early). I would say that early costs are slightly high also on buildings at least. But mostly because city production was lowered.

Unit upkeep is too low at 1/50. I wouldn't lower it further. You can take the honor policies to pay for troops with kills and at the moment there's a lower upkeep bonus there too (which in my opinion shouldn't be). Plus oligarchy to pay for garrisons.

 

[Eiger2112]

I think the REAL foundation of all this, and the reason most people want to adjust gamespeed, or play marathon or epic, is unit movement speed.

If you sped units up, then they'd attack WAY beyond their sight distance, removing any chance of strategic planning. So instead, you crank production and research down so there are more TURNS during any research or production cycle.

But you already have Epic and Marathon as options, which slow research and production down proportionally, while leaving unit movement speeds untouched. It allows you to have full wars with a certain era's units, without too many new units coming along. With a quick game (though I've never played) I imagine a unit could become obsolete after being built and traveling to an not-so-distant enemy city.

What we're talking about here is the balance between production and research. It takes a mod to change these to different ratios. I think tech is too fast, but I voted and don't feel I have any telling points to 'prove' my perspective, so I'll just let my vote stand as a data point in your poll. But I think the point about unit movement was an important distinction to make.

Cheers, Eiger

 

[Tomice]

I already played Civ4 on epic speed and even tried marathon as a student with lots of spare time. I found epic to be the ideal speed for me (in combination with large maps, I couldn't imagine playing with less than 8 civs).

So, to be honest, I never tried much else than large/epic for Civ5. I also never tried "unnatural" map scripts.

 

[mystikx21]

I don't think game speed has anything to do with the overall balance point between research and production, or whether one exists in the first place.

It does have to do with the value of military units and movement and it does adjust research speeds slightly, but it doesn't suddenly put research and production speeds into conflict with each other to change game speed anymore than they are. Which is to say, they're not. The problem is simply that production is off early and late in different directions (too low early and too high late). Researching tech doesn't have anything to do with that. That's the real foundational problem I see right now is that production capacity is imbalanced by game era, by infrastructure, and versus other yields (like gold). Adjusting the tech rate isn't going to do anything about this.

 

[Dunkah]

The third option in my eyes is that yes Tech is slower than production. (Not sure if I said that correctly). Meaning I run out of things to build. But that is that way I want it.

I want to be able to build units. I want to be able to increase my Gold income or Science by turning a city on to Gold or Science production.

That gives me the ability to speed up my Science or Gold rate depending on what I need most, where my enemy may be doing something completely different.

 

[Thalassicus]

@mystikx21
Thank you for the analysis. I'll think about ways to emphasize production more in the weeks ahead.

I recommend using percentages for tables, because going from 10 to 20 is different from 1000 to 1010. Cities have access to about 100% cumulative yield bonuses for each of the main yields (production, gold, science, culture). Production remains somewhat weaker than the others, since its bonuses come late, and often require special circumstances.

 

[mystikx21]

I've updated the tables with percentages, but the general points that early buildings cost more and late buildings tend to cost less is still in play I think regardless of scaling issues. People seem frustrated with these construction costs early and end up adapting their play style to heavy gold production instead of a modest level of local self-sufficiency plus specialisations.

I think one issue here is that gold gives a 100% bonus fairly early so it already inherently undervalues using production very much. 1.12 previously had a +50% gold bonus and maybe a 40% production bonus (25 from smith+factory+15 for units or buildings, with another 15% bringing production up further later on. We have now a 100% bonus versus a 65% bonus (45+20), with another 25-50 later (I don't think nuclear plants should provide more than solar by the way. They're mutually exclusive and it thus discourages using solar plants where before you could squeeze more cities into high production by using both). Gold should probably be about +75% at most if production remains at these levels. If it improves to 100%, it should be late in the game, after/as production improves such that we're not encouraged to use gold farming instead of mines. We could change the stock exchange to say, .25/pop and +25% for example, and change mints or banks to a .25/pop and use lower multipliers on these (banks at 50% is already very high already). I'd prefer to reduce both production and gold multipliers personally but a smoother balance would be better too.

So one way to improve the value of production would be to continue to reduce or alter the timing for the multiplier of gold rather than introduce more sources of production. Reducing the gold buy reducer on protectionism/Ben in the latest version was also helpful here (I would just put both at 15% and tack something else onto protectionism, like a customs house bonus?).

 

[Thalassicus]

I increased early production because there seems to be a general consensus it was too low in the early game. I'm focused on small changes because 1 in 3 people feel things are already balanced, a better proportion than in the late game poll.

One reason for early gold bonuses is people used to consider hill starts better than non-hill regions, and production more important than gold. My goal is to make these equally valuable. I steadily shifted things over in favor of gold over the years, and it appears we finally passed the line in favor of gold, so small shifts back in favor of production should reach a balanced state between the two.

 

[mystikx21]

I don't think that's a desirable goal versus adjusting costs.

I think one reason to avoid raising production is that adjusting production costs to be in a stable balance is a lot harder than adjusting culture income versus policies or gold income rates. The cost of early things going up versus the cost of late things going up is also a different problem for production because it's much more fixed than other yields based on tiles rather than infrastructure (or it was). Just giving more production to the equation does resolve early game questions but just snowballs more production into the game for later.

Effectively that solution means that
a) the AI will need a lot higher priority on production/gold than before, or they'll just get creamed by good economy management every game.
b) the cost of later game objects may need to go up more generally than the 1.8 effect on units/buildings or 1.2 on wonders/projects. Production balance effects everything, even the cost of rushing things, the direct cost of at least two victory conditions (space and conquest), and the ability to build up for the others.

I'd rather keep the cost of later game buildings slightly lower (on average) and reduce the amount of production capacity via gold and hammers in multipliers to something closer to the previous level because that leaves it easier to find a balance point in a tighter range than if we make gold and production too much like culture or science, where the balance points exist in a world of large numbers and may be harder to locate.

 

[Ahriman]

I increased early production because there seems to be a general consensus it was too low in the early game.

I don't have a strong feeling about whether per-city production should be 2 or 3. But at 3 I think we don't need the city hall building. And I don't think that adjusting per-city production is really addressing "production is too weak in the early game". The problem is that mines are weak compared to villages, because the villages give a yield of 2 and scale better into the midgame.

 

[Thalassicus]

Other than Great Halls (I renamed them based on your suggestion elsewhere ) what alternative can we explore to make challenges match rewards? I feel very uncomfortable getting lots of free stuff. I'm searching for ways to make our early income come from tangible sources.

If we remove the Great Hall, our capital will have lower food and production on turn 0, and no border expansion. How do we solve that without creating other problems?

 

[mitsho]

Putting them on a tech seems like the most straightforward thing to do (though I don't really like it since it bloats the early game even more).

Splitting Pottery up into two techs at half cost: Mysticism (gives Shrines and Palaces) which leads to Sailing and Calendar and Pottery (gives Granaries and Great Halls) and leads to Writing?

EDIT: Oh, there's the caveat of "on turn 0". For starters, I'm not sure the happiness from the palaces needs to be on turn 0. It takes some time til we can expand anyways. Could the extra yields be tied to a "minimum city size" so in order to make us grow the city first? But that's not on turn 0 either... So I'm outta ideas now.

EDIT 2: A special tile improvement only existing once (=from a special Great Person) would make the yields tangible and available on turn 0, but would screw up lots of other balance adjustments, no?

 

[Ahriman]

our capital will have lower food and production on turn 0

I thought that your goal was to have the capital *not* have inherent advantages over other cities. If that is the case, then just set the per-city yields to be whatever we want them to yield.

If that isn't the case, then just add whatever advantage you want the capital to have to a Capital building. Don't AIs already work this way?

I don't see why new cities need to be weak without investing in a hall. You already had to invest in the cost of the settler and deal with the 4 unhappiness per city.
If they want more food, they can build a granary. If they want more culture, they can build a monument. If they want more production, they can work mines.

Basically, I think particularly in the early game that yields should come from working tiles. Adding in a Great Hall building that is a no-brainer to build and gives free yields feels to me like the free-stuff you are uncomfortable with, and it makes terrain and improvements less important, because you can build it anywhere.

I would prefer for improvement choice and terrain to actually matter, and for you to be able to specialize what kind of yields you want by which tiles/improvements you work.

Basically: I don't understand what problem you think the Great Hall is supposed to fix.

 

[Thalassicus]

@mitsho
I was thinking of something like that too, splitting it up into 2 techs. The militaristic side of the tech tree has more techs than the peaceful side, so I think it's okay if we add a new tech and counterbalance it with slightly faster research rate.

If we remove the Great Hall, our capital will have lower food and production on turn 0, and no border expansion. How do we solve that without creating other problems?

a. et the per-city yields to be whatever we want them to yield.
b. [A]dd whatever advantage you want the capital to have to a Capital building.
c. I think particularly in the early game that yields should come from working tiles.

A. gives us free stuff without the challenge of developing cities.
B. gives the capital an advantage over other cities, which discourages city specialization.
C. not balanceable because of indivisible low numbers.
D. Great Hall overwhelms some people with too many choices.
E. ???

Can you think of anything else we can try? Everything we've experimented with so far has problems, so I went with the option I feel has the least issues.

 

[Ahriman]

The first approach gives us free stuff

This still makes no sense to me. It seems incoherent to me to say "the problem is that yields are too low" and then say that the solution 'make yields higher' doesn't work because "it gives us free stuff".

I also don't see what the problem with the capital having a few more culture than other cities is. As was pointed out before, the main thing that drove "the capital is awesome" is that it was the first city so it had a big head start on the other cities, and because it's always in a decent location, not small yield differences that become irrelevant after the early game.

And other cities getting stuff isn't free because you had to pay for the settler. Tweak settler costs if you think there's a problem.

My problem with the Great Hall is that it *does* create other problems. It is a no-brainer first thing to build, and it gives culture which detracts from the monument.

If you think that expansion is too valuable, you can solve that by increasing the base yield of all cities (but still don't give them culture), and make settlers more expensive.
I don't think expansion is too valuable, so I don't think settlers do need to be more expensive.

 

[MrL567]

I find, that in the early game, things build to slow even on prince, which the level I play at because, buildings take like 14-16 turns to make, which makes it very slow to go and start, and I dislike the fact that you have to make a city hall, because it prevents the secondary cities from getting up and running. If you want other cities to be stronger, give them a random unique building that could dpened on a sorter code that says "This area has lots of hills, it will be strong construction speed, but slow growth so lets add X too food as a building to allow the city to GROW. Its would be easier and more fun that the secondary city had a unique bounus instead of being nerfed to hell only because you have to waste time to get it up, it should be the other way around, you should reward players for spreading out, not punishing them with slow tiles that make them start slow.