Core economy model: Civ5 vs traditional (tax rate, Science and Commerce)

[Deggial]

Regarding taxation and sliders:

What about the obvious relation of tax height and happieness? There could be a reasonable trade-off between both:
Lower the taxes and therefore your incomme to fight to much unhappieness. Raise your revenues by higher taxes and face unhappy citicen.

Of course, both effects must not be to big to breake the already existing mechanisms, but might alter them a little bit to enlarge your influence on your empire. In particular, lowering taxes to almost zero income (-100% of "normal" level) should give you not more than, let's say, +5 happieness while raising the taxes by only 5% over "normal" should give you already one unhappy face. (So, +100% taxes would lead to -20 happieness).

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The dissociation of revenue and science (= the lack of the corresponding Civ4-slider) works perfectly for me!

 

[UWHabs]

It's not perfect, but I've grown to appreciate it. The fact that money seems to have a purpose in the game other than allowing me to run my science slider higher I think is a refreshing change. Sure, it can use some tweaking, but I think it has a good foundation.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Model looks different on paper but functions too similarly in practice

Tech trade spam = RA spam. P. Tower is a bit ludicrous since the patch. Gscientists were always good; V makes them better.

You might enjoy some good base rates but it's always the RA/TT that drive these games unfortunately, unless you turn that off. So, what would my answer be if they were off?

Both models have limitations. Those saying that there were no money issues in civ IV were ignorant to it. However IV had annoying amounts of micro with infra ----> slider micro and actually de-valued producing gold (mostly you sell tech to get it in single player). IV has some interesting splits between commerce-driven outputs vs direct outputs which was good.

V pop=science and = pop is problematic in the same vein as commerce. I guess you really can't get away from tile/hex luck, but it's a little silly that some dye and a whale can make an empire much better in tech. I do think V would have done better with city-level happiness constraints but to sub this global "happiness" for maintenance with similar penalties for going over. Maybe some "bureaucracy" or "management" type limitation excuse to prevent ICS.

 

[Aristos]

I prefer the Civ 5 model where science is based on population;

Yes.

That is why Nigeria is more advanced than Germany; it has more population.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Yes.

That is why Nigeria is more advanced than Germany; it has more population.

Germany spammed RAs with the rest of Europe.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Germany also has more libraries, universities, observatories, etc. They have scientist specialists. I could point to a few more things as well. Civ5 isn't population above all either.

 

[Aristos]

still... it's not population what defines advancement, it's investment (including investment in population, of course, in the form of infra), but still... investment. Pop=science is utterly broken.

 

[Deggial]

@ Aristos:
Investment in what? Libraries, schools, universities? Oh well, we *have* all of this in CiV - and they are tremendously important for your scientific advance! You will lose contact to other civs if you rely on your population only.

Sure, you need money to fuel your research, too. Take the building's upkeep as salery for teachers and sponsoring research. If you want to spend more money, sign RAs!

(Additionally: Fact is, you can NOT speed up research infinitely simply by throwing money at it. So, the need of planing ahead by building the scientific infrastructure in contrast to "just" pulling a slider is way more interesting (*for me*).)

P.S.
And yes, I *know* that there where scientific buildings in Civ4, too!

 

[cavilier210]

I like the idea of having a slidable tax rate that influences happiness.

The simplicity of CiV gets boring after you've attained your own continent.

By end game, all the AI does is nuke you, because they can't invade your home continent. On an Earth map, once you own all of NA, your pretty much on easy street for home defense. Hell, I don't even keep a home military at that point.

 

[Bandobras Took]

still... it's not population what defines advancement, it's investment (including investment in population, of course, in the form of infra), but still... investment. Pop=science is utterly broken.

But this question concerns whether science from people is better than science from suburbs. In either case, you still make the investment into Libraries, Universities, Research Labs, etc.

 

[Louis XXIV]

still... it's not population what defines advancement, it's investment (including investment in population, of course, in the form of infra), but still... investment. Pop=science is utterly broken.

But it's a structural investment that defines advancement. Government supported research is not at the heart of scientific achievement. Even if it were to mirror real life government investment, the tax slider would probably never go above 20%.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The current system is bad.
It puts too much emphasis on populatiion, which wouldn't be a problem if the AI didn't get huge happiness bonuses to enable city spam.
It's true that cIV practically forced you to max science spending most of the time, but this was mainly becaus there were no good uses for gold. Older civ games and SMAC didn't have this problem, and the system was much more flexible. It allowed for short-term adjustments and high-risk, high-reward strategies.
My standard approach for a cultural victory in CiV is just play the way I always play and coose the right policies, my cultural approach in cIV was to choose the rigth time maximum culture spending. It was scary to see my civilization fall further and further behind in tech, but it was very satisfying to pull of.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Ugh, I hated that you could use the slider for cultural victory. It took most of the challenge out of the system.

 

[Bandobras Took]

The current system is bad.
It puts too much emphasis on populatiion, which wouldn't be a problem if the AI didn't get huge happiness bonuses to enable city spam.

If the AI didn't get these bonuses, would you have a problem with the system?

My standard approach for a cultural victory in CiV is just play the way I always play and coose the right policies, my cultural approach in cIV was to choose the rigth time maximum culture spending. It was scary to see my civilization fall further and further behind in tech, but it was very satisfying to pull of.

My standard approach for cultural victory in 4 was to have one city build wonders, one city settle great artists, and one city run a lot of artists with the Hermitage. No particular need to fall behind on tech. I can easily fall behind on tech while going for cultural victory in Civ 5, as well, so I'm not sure what your point is.

 

[TomMcV]

Realistically science should be much more than 'fixed' stats. War should increase your science (comptetition to build the best guns). Lots of neighbours should increase your science(competition.). Large empires should decrease your science (corruption/stagnation).

I like that science isn't slider dependent. It means you don't tunnel vision your science rate so much (at least I don't). Science has become a product of, not a reason for, your Empire.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Ugh, I hated that you could use the slider for cultural victory. It took most of the challenge out of the system.

Oh, but it was a challenge. You could speed up the victory conditions and flip a couple of border cities, but you'll almost inevitably fall behind in tech and military.
It's a significant trade-off and just staying alive could be tricky with this approach.

If the AI didn't get these bonuses, would you have a problem with the system?

It would be less broken, but still not as good as the old system. I just the flexibility to temporarily trade research for money or culture.

My standard approach for cultural victory in 4 was to have one city build wonders, one city settle great artists, and one city run a lot of artists with the Hermitage. No particular need to fall behind on tech.

That works too, but it's probably slower.

I can easily fall behind on tech while going for cultural victory in Civ 5, as well, so I'm not sure what your point is.

My point is that you feel less in control in CiV and game sre less dynamic. Slider + tech trading means that you can fall behind and get the upper hand, and it means you can have a small high-tech civilization. I just think it was more fun and offered more strategic depth..

 

[Bandobras Took]

It would be less broken, but still not as good as the old system. I just the flexibility to temporarily trade research for money or culture.

I would have preferred it if 5 had done more to divide production/gold, myself. I like flexibility, but I also like having to choose between several equally good options.

That works too, but it's probably slower.

It's definitely slower, but then, speed wasn't precisely the question.

My point is that you feel less in control in CiV and games are less dynamic. Slider + tech trading means that you can fall behind and get the upper hand, and it means you can have a small high-tech civilization. I just think it was more fun and offered more strategic depth..

I'll admit that games in 5 are less dynamic, but I do not feel it to be the fault of the pop=research model; I would blame it more on the rules limiting expansion and the accretion rather than adoption of social policies/government.

 

[NicTeos]

Traditional model is good, especially in civ 4. It is a kind of decision there, while in civ0.5 there was gold and science generated automatically, it was unavoidable and no need to really push this ressources. Therefor in civ4 it's always the decision, if you build a farm,cottage or production. There is somekind of decision and together with national wonders to specialize cities.

 

[Bandobras Took]

A similar decision would still be there if there were no rush-buy in Civ 5. Then it would be a question of production vs gold, rather than science vs gold.