Expansion in BNW

[ArnoldI]

I've just moved from G&K to BNW and already seen in lots of threads and in-game too that expanding is (almost) always a bad thing. About this, I got three questions:

1: Why did Firaxis decide to punish the expansionists so badly?

2: Is there any mod which corrects it? I'm not very good at large games but I decided to try it just when got BNW, and now I really want to get some expansion on it.

3: If expanding is that bad, why the AI is always spamming cities like there's no other option?

 

[TheMadFiddler]

I've just moved from G&K to BNW and already seen in lots of threads and in-game too that expanding is (almost) always a bad thing. About this, I got three questions:

1: Why did Firaxis decide to punish the expansionists so badly?

2: Is there any mod which corrects it? I'm not very good at large games but I decided to try it just when got BNW, and now I really want to get some expansion on it.

3: If expanding is that bad, why the AI is always spamming cities like there's no other option?

Can't comment on #1 or 2, but you answered #3 in your own question.

 

[LoneRebel]

Your question #1 is answered by #3.

If the AI's still spamming cities like there's no other option even now, then that means expansionists haven't been punished enough yet, if anything.

 

[dw0]

1: Why did Firaxis decide to punish the expansionists so badly?

Probably to counter Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) strategies. Have Settler, Will Travel was pretty much uniformly the best approach to winning any type of victory prior to BNW, and I think Firaxis felt that was unintentional and decided to curtail it.

2: Is there any mod which corrects it? I'm not very good at large games but I decided to try it just when got BNW, and now I really want to get some expansion on it.

I'm sure there are mods that reduce the per-city penalties; Steam workshop search would be a good place to check, or I'm sure other players can offer help. I'll leave that question to players who are more familiar with mods.

3: If expanding is that bad, why the AI is always spamming cities like there's no other option?

For one thing, the AI generally has massive happiness bonuses that allow this sort of play. Without the happiness limits, spamming cities becomes at least a bit more viable, though I'm sure some AIs still wind up hurting themselves under BNW mechanics (e.g. a few games ago Catherine settled TWICE as many cities as anyone else, without conquering any, and wound up with pitiful science, negative GPT, etc.). Also some AIs just get high dice rolls on their Expansion flavor; remember that in any given game, an AI can get up to +2 higher than their average Expansion value.

 

[danaphanous]

You can definitely still expand and it definitely still is worth it. It's just more difficult and requires you to build more infrastructure to support it (aka expanding in phases). I like it and think it's realistic. You don't spam a bunch of 1-5 pop cities and expect it to be better than a well-structured, streamlined society. BNW has added in this realism. Notice that the AI's actually expand TOO much as dw0 said. I've been in games where they exploded outward and then couldn't keep up in gold, science, or culture. Eventually they may catch up, especially if you trade them all your luxuries to enable them. I noticed Spain floundering after conquering her whole continent. Being a gold-focused tall India, with all of the world's CS's shipping me luxuries, I sold her some extras for good money. Almost the next turn she's back to warmongering and starts crushing some of my city state Allies near her. My mistake. AI is still bound by the same rules, just has higher base happiness.

That being said, New cities are definitely still worth the effort, you just need to have a productive and happy base to expand from. It makes me have to work hard to tame all that land and stay happy and productive.

If you're having trouble with happiness try religious help. Gives dramatic early help. I like pagodas. I'll save some faith. When I pop down a new city my happiness drops around 3 and 2-10 turns later when my religion spreads into it I instantly buy a pagoda for 2 free happiness. You can get almost 1.5x the amount of cities just buy securing a unique happy building like this. If you keep back some gold I've found a city near horses in the first half of the game is almost always viable. settle and immediately buy a circus on the cheap + new horses! Also, focus on policies that encourage expansion if you want it. Liberty is good for this. Patronage is "amazing" for this. It doesn't buff you for number of your cities, but encourages you to have more output and gold as this impresses CS's who ally you, who give you luxuries, science, and happiness, which gives you much greater capacity to expand...

 

[Calouste]

You can still expand in BNW, you just can't city spam early in the game. You have to expand to good city sites, of which of course there are only a limited number, not just settle in a tightest grid pattern.

Later in the game, when you have cash on hand to rush buy, when you have policies and techs that increase city and tile yield, you can still city spam in whatever space is still open.

 

[Calouste]

You can definitely still expand and it definitely still is worth it. It's just more difficult and requires you to build more infrastructure to support it (aka expanding in phases). I like it and think it's realistic. You don't spam a bunch of 1-5 pop cities and expect it to be better than a well-structured society. BNW has added in this realism. New cities are definitely still worth the effort, you just need to have a productive and happy base to expand from. It makes me have to work hard to tame all that land and stay happy and productive.

If you're having trouble with happiness try religious help. Gives dramatic early help. I like pagodas. I'll save some faith. When I pop down a new city my happiness drops around 3 and 2-10 turns later when my religion spreads into it I instantly buy a pagoda for 2 free happiness. You can get almost 1.5x the amount of cities just buy securing a unique happy building like this. Also focus on policies that encourage expansion if you want it. Liberty is good for this. Patronage is amazing for this.

I like the realism. I like to think that my people leave the capital because there is no longer any good land for them to work there, and of course they are going to look for a new place to settle where there is good land for them to work.

 

[joncnunn]

I've just moved from G&K to BNW and already seen in lots of threads and in-game too that expanding is (almost) always a bad thing. About this, I got three questions:

1: Why did Firaxis decide to punish the expansionists so badly?

2: Is there any mod which corrects it? I'm not very good at large games but I decided to try it just when got BNW, and now I really want to get some expansion on it.

3: If expanding is that bad, why the AI is always spamming cities like there's no other option?

#1 It's concentrated against self founding cities wide; there's very little against a wide puppet empire within reason.
Because the lead developer of Civ V during Vanilla preferred playing Civ IV by only founding a few cities and then conquering an empire with it but leaving the conquered cities to a governor.

However, at time of Vanilla release the happiness sources were so abundant it really didn't matter (unless you wanted to build national wonders); and the game was so easy that the first several patches all reduced happiness. G&K added some happiness back, (and later BNW added late sources) but by then people had discovered the real value of National Wonders and so aren't about to build a city past mid game; and when considering annexing will check to see if the puppet has already built the buildings needed for remaining national wonders or not.

#2 The community mod tries to reduce this effect; yes. I think it included only needing 2/3rds of cities to have X building for national wonder instead of every single city which does help a lot given its usually the same one city your having to self buy the last copy of an improvement for.

#3 Because the AI flavors were written around CD release version of happiness. But of note here is that Vanilla and G&K both played on Chieftain. (BNW plays on "AI default handicap" which is similar to Warlord) And when humans are on King and above the happiness modifiers are further modified and will result on the AI actually being able to build as many cities as it likes.

 

[ArnoldI]

Thanks people, your answers really tell me the focos of BNW. I think the problem with expansion is just myself.