Death of Imperialism

[Silverman6083]

So first of all just to be clear I Love CiV I have like 400+ hours into it. Although there is one aspect to this that bugs me a lot. The game highly promotes small nations. Historically settlers weren't like we have 4 cities, our work is done here. No, they were ALWAYS looking to expand, and the game doesn't promote that. I mean the game treats the world like its an instant world of nation-states, not a world of imperialism, expansionism, war, plague, and harsh realism. It kinda pisses me off, thoughts? Comments?

 

[Greizer85]

In Vanilla you could spam cities with little penalty... In G&K wide and tall play were relatively balanced... And now in BNW the scale has swung the opposite way with tall clearly superior to wide in most situations. Imo the 5% science penalty per city needs to go (completing the Liberty tree could be made to remove it); that way puppet empires will be viable again and expansion will always be profitable. Or you could leave like 2% per city if it'd be too op otherwise. Right now you should only puppet if you cannot take the happiness hit of direct annexation... Something is clearly wrong with this situation imo.

 

[qalsip1977]

In the lower difficulties (< King) you can easily promote a wide empire and do quite well. I played as Shoshone last night on King and had 8 cities by turn 50. I only dipped into unhappiness once I think.

My early game was rapid expansion and I built most of my cities along rivers to utilize Sacred Waters. I had good luck finding luxuries and I allied a Mercantile CS early.

Once I established my empire and teched up to Commanche Warriors I elected to assist my boy Hiawatha in a DoW against Elizabeth. Hiawatha and I remained allies until then end as my war machine steamrolled everyone else. I love Autocracy for warmongering with a wide empire. I think at the end of the game I had 100+ happiness even after annexing every city I captured. It works!

 

[Silverman6083]

In the lower difficulties (< King)

Keyword lower difficulties...wide should be feasible on every difficulty regardless of the start

 

[Glassmage]

dunno what you guys are talking about I still see people and AIs spam up to 15 cities.

 

[Greizer85]

AIs, sure. People who do that are gimping themselves with the science penalty. I haven't run the numbers but I think 10 cities is the absolute max you'll get away with without slowing your science with additional cities... And they'll have to be *very* good cities. I'd like to be wrong ofc and hope that I am.

 

[Gamewizard]

Wide empires are still feasible, but they require more micro than your 4 city tall strategy. There is plenty of happiness to be found from luxuries, mercantile CS, religious beliefs, policies, and buildings. The science penalty isn't really a problem either once you get universities. The big problem, particularly on higher difficulties, is that the AI will claim all the good spots AND have a big enough military to attack/defend way before a player can start expanding to those good spots. I haven't tried this yet, but maybe playing on large maps with standard everything else would create an ideal world for an expansionist.

 

[VladTepes]

I find that about seven cities suffice until the industrial. Then you may find that your territory is lacking in one or more new resources (coal, aluminum, uranium) so you'll have to expand again. I've never gone above twelve cities in BNW though.

 

[SilverDash]

Wide empires are still feasible, but they require more micro than your 4 city tall strategy. There is plenty of happiness to be found from luxuries, mercantile CS, religious beliefs, policies, and buildings. The science penalty isn't really a problem either once you get universities. The big problem, particularly on higher difficulties, is that the AI will claim all the good spots AND have a big enough military to attack/defend way before a player can start expanding to those good spots. I haven't tried this yet, but maybe playing on large maps with standard everything else would create an ideal world for an expansionist.

Yes that. By that time there won't be a single tile on the entire world that is not taken. Even a single artic tile in the middle of plain ocean will have a city on it... And defending a single new city far away from your main cities will be hard on deity.

Wide empires are only viable on lower difficulties imo. And even then a tall empire might still be stronger.

 

[crabe]

Yeah I don't really know why people are still saying that going wide is a problem. It was just way too powerful before and now you have to actually develop those cities for it to pay off. Same with warmongering...it used to be harder to up, now it is more balanced but everyone wants to do things the way they have always done them so they get the idea that BNW has nerfed any strategy except tall.

Puppet empires have definitely been nerfed, and rightly so.

 

[pthieu1986]

but in the end we'll always have chance to rule a wide empire by wars @@

 

[Greizer85]

There comes a point though when a new city simply won't contribute 5% science no matter what. And way before that point you'll come to realize that a new city would be too costly to develop / not pay off enough science to offset its penalty cost before the end of the game. There's also the opportunity cost of getting that new tech 1 or 2 turns later... Someone could crunch the numbers for the various map sizes; on Huge maps the penalty is 3% iirc. I'm not gonna do it as I'm terribly bad with numbers.

 

[crabe]

A point in the tech tree, you mean? The penalty from cities isn't cumulative; it doesn't stack with itself. It's a per-city increase to the cost of techs that is going to be more than offset by the massive amount of beakers you're producing. With food trade caravans and later hospitals, it's not difficult to make new cities worth it.

 

[crabe]

So, to make sure I understand this, the tech cost increase is linear? So each city increases the cost of a tech by 3% of the base cost, rather than 3% of the existing cost? This makes a huge difference. With 10 cities, its the difference between +30% and +34% but with 20 cities its the difference between +60% and +81%

That is correct. It is true that there is a cost associated with getting a city up and running science-wise, but pretty much every city is capable of offsetting its own tech cost penalty, given enough time. You just can't make an infinite number of crappy cities that you don't intend to develop (without it gimping your science). So yes, wide is still generally better for science victory. Not to mention all the other benefits it has (and that many of the policies in the Rationalism tree favour wide as well). If you actually develop your cities, the only real downsides to making lots of them are the increased cost to policies (which doesn't even slow down a cultural victory anymore) and that it's harder to defend a larger border obviously.

edit: the best ideological tenet for science is in Order as well. +25% Science in cities with a Factory and build Factories in half time? Yes please!

 

[Greizer85]

I crunched some numbers (despite my ineptitude), and it seems I was wrong. I had to make some pretty drastic simplifications, but basically if your new city produces 10% of your capital's science within a reasonable time frame then you have no worries (in fact you will benefit in terms of science, although the benefit is very slight). What is 'a reasonable time frame' is hard to say though.

This could be tested by playing tall vs. wide on the same map... With as little randomization as possible, i.e. no ruins or building wonders, no AIs nearby, full knowledge of the map, etc.

 

[Johnnymac1418]

They could add new luxuries to make smaller islands and ever other continents so it would encourage for you to build colonies. But for this to work, the science penalty I think should be lowered to 1% or even .5% per city. That way you can have small cities just to ship back luxuries.

 

[black213]

The lack of variety in luxuries around the "starting areas" of civs also makes going wide a bad idea due to lack of happiness from luxuries to offset the unhappiness from cities and population. I pretty much never settle cities without new unique luxuries to give me.

 

[Silverman6083]

Okay for me the science penalty isn't the problem, it's the happiness. I feel that there aren't enough luxuries, not enough happiness buildings soon enough, and even building those your early game you'll still be unhappy, in debt, & losing science anyway.

 

[learner gamer]

So first of all just to be clear I Love CiV I have like 400+ hours into it. Although there is one aspect to this that bugs me a lot. The game highly promotes small nations. Historically settlers weren't like we have 4 cities, our work is done here. No, they were ALWAYS looking to expand, and the game doesn't promote that. I mean the game treats the world like its an instant world of nation-states, not a world of imperialism, expansionism, war, plague, and harsh realism. It kinda pisses me off, thoughts? Comments?

IMHO, the happiness problem is the number one issue with the game and why I've moved on to EU4. If you're really lucky with resource distribution, have a mercantile AI nearby that you can ally with and / or can benefit from happiness via religion you might just be able to get 8 or more cities by the mid game, depending on the game's skill level. Most of the time though, the happy cap limits the size of your mid game empire to a more modest 4-6 cities. And depending on the map you play on and the distribution of luxuries, AI and mercantile CS on it, this can be true even on the lower levels. There are loads of youtube clips out there which prove it – and I've yet to see anyone provide a youtube clip which shows otherwise, despite having asked the folks on here twice previously to present such evidence.

The simple reality is that Civ 5's happy cap puts in place a hard cap on the total number of hexes you can work across your empire – your choice as a gamer is simply to decide how to allocate them, whether tall, wide or some mixture. The result is that the battle for land that characterized Civ 4 is virtually absent in Civ 5.

Every youtube video I've seen has confirmed the same thing: if your idea of empire is a collection of 4-6 cities, then Civ 5 is the game for you. And to be fair, if you enjoy playing an empire of that size, then Civ 5 provides much to enjoy. If however you wish to consistently put together an empire that contains many more cities than this, you're far better off IMHO playing Civ 4, EU 4 or one of the Total War games, which have mechanics in place that allow you to expand much more easily.

 

[bonafide11]

The problem isn't that wide empires are "feasible" as some have suggested, it's that they're weak in comparison to tall ones, which makes it so strategy wise you're stuck following a pretty limited gamepath if you want to win on higher difficulty levels. Going wide is feasible, but going tall is clearly superior in numerous ways -- happiness, science, culture, gold, and foreign relations all benefit from a tall empire. But the game isn't as fun when you're stuck following the same strategy to win every time. Sometimes I want to change it up. Likewise, going for military expansion is an inferior strategy to playing tall and peaceful, and I think this needs to be better balanced.

The conundrum is how to make it beneficial to go wide without setting up runaway civs that keep the revamped late game from being interesting?