Zhahz
PC Gamer
"Expand as quickly as possible to keep amount of techs and civics at a minimum. This way you can lock down costs of districts a lot earlier."
I usually build a monument in every city (usually first, at least once I'm to the point of spamming cities) so their tiles expand. Between that and the +sci you get for population, going wide tends to cause me to fly thru both trees. I'm usually still expanding when I'm already hitting modern techs.
While the cost of districts does get ridiculous I find I can usually deal with it with internal trade routes. Once the costs skyrocket making a route from new/weak city to my capital/older cities is usually a huge production boost. Once a city gets its industrial zone and buildings done, things aren't so horrible.
There also, IMO, needs to be SOME kind of "cost" for going wide and the increasing costs are basically it.
The other thing for me is, I don't need ALL cities to be godly powerhouses. It's really not a big deal if some take ages to fully develop since my core cities easily take care of the heavy lifting.
Lastly, and somewhat related (and also related to pace and flying thru the tech/civic trees), what I think needs to change is that you should need to actually build infrastructure to get thru the tech and civ trees. I seem to fly thru both with ease due to the +sci from pop (going wide) and just building monuments. One should need a decent commitment to campuses to keep up with tech, and one should need to do something for culture too. Simply spamming cities and flying thru the trees seems a bit much. I can have a 10-20 city empire with 2-3 campuses and vaporize the AIs for tech to the point of being able to colonial war them all by mid/late game without even trying. In Civ 5 if you didn't really focus on science you'd get left behind by the AIs even on normal difficulties.
I tend to build campus and related buildings more for great scientist points than for any impact it has on research speed.
If you had to actually work at getting thru the trees, ie, if you weren't flying thru them just for existing, then district costs being tied to tech advancement would be a more reasonable thing.
I didn't like the crushing penalties for going wide in Civ 5 (since I like big empires) but I wouldn't be opposed their being some kind of "corruption" (not an actual corruption stat but a reduction in sci/culture gains ala Civ 5, just not as unpleasantly brutal) to somewhat reduce the complete dominance of going wide. I'd rather see something like that than 40+ turn build times for districts.
PS - Can we as players ever be happy with this kind of thing? Every iteration of civ has had some way to "combat" massive expansion and it's never anything we find to be fun, but at the same time, I think there needs to be something since ICS/rex get tiresome and unfun when they become the routine/norm as well. This is something they tackled in drastic fashion in Civ 5 but kind of went overboard with it. It's a tricky thing to solve. It feels gamey/cheesy/lame if a small empire or single city can compete with a sprawling empire for sci/victory, yet the alternative of having wide be "the best way to go every time" will become tedious and monotonous eventually when you feel obligated to do it (or if you don't fill every space with cities the AIs will which is annoying - the ICS issue).
I usually build a monument in every city (usually first, at least once I'm to the point of spamming cities) so their tiles expand. Between that and the +sci you get for population, going wide tends to cause me to fly thru both trees. I'm usually still expanding when I'm already hitting modern techs.
While the cost of districts does get ridiculous I find I can usually deal with it with internal trade routes. Once the costs skyrocket making a route from new/weak city to my capital/older cities is usually a huge production boost. Once a city gets its industrial zone and buildings done, things aren't so horrible.
There also, IMO, needs to be SOME kind of "cost" for going wide and the increasing costs are basically it.
The other thing for me is, I don't need ALL cities to be godly powerhouses. It's really not a big deal if some take ages to fully develop since my core cities easily take care of the heavy lifting.
Lastly, and somewhat related (and also related to pace and flying thru the tech/civic trees), what I think needs to change is that you should need to actually build infrastructure to get thru the tech and civ trees. I seem to fly thru both with ease due to the +sci from pop (going wide) and just building monuments. One should need a decent commitment to campuses to keep up with tech, and one should need to do something for culture too. Simply spamming cities and flying thru the trees seems a bit much. I can have a 10-20 city empire with 2-3 campuses and vaporize the AIs for tech to the point of being able to colonial war them all by mid/late game without even trying. In Civ 5 if you didn't really focus on science you'd get left behind by the AIs even on normal difficulties.
I tend to build campus and related buildings more for great scientist points than for any impact it has on research speed.
If you had to actually work at getting thru the trees, ie, if you weren't flying thru them just for existing, then district costs being tied to tech advancement would be a more reasonable thing.
I didn't like the crushing penalties for going wide in Civ 5 (since I like big empires) but I wouldn't be opposed their being some kind of "corruption" (not an actual corruption stat but a reduction in sci/culture gains ala Civ 5, just not as unpleasantly brutal) to somewhat reduce the complete dominance of going wide. I'd rather see something like that than 40+ turn build times for districts.
PS - Can we as players ever be happy with this kind of thing? Every iteration of civ has had some way to "combat" massive expansion and it's never anything we find to be fun, but at the same time, I think there needs to be something since ICS/rex get tiresome and unfun when they become the routine/norm as well. This is something they tackled in drastic fashion in Civ 5 but kind of went overboard with it. It's a tricky thing to solve. It feels gamey/cheesy/lame if a small empire or single city can compete with a sprawling empire for sci/victory, yet the alternative of having wide be "the best way to go every time" will become tedious and monotonous eventually when you feel obligated to do it (or if you don't fill every space with cities the AIs will which is annoying - the ICS issue).
