I just don't see it earthling. Cities don't start growing super fast until late game, so your complaint that you won't be able to have a ton of big cities until late game is irrelevant. It's not until you get Hospitals/medical facilities that you're cities can really get massive at a high rate. If you're expecting to see lots of 15-20+ pop cities before theatres and stadiums become available don't hold your breath. It's not going to happen on a regular basis. The reason no one is addressing your problem is because it's not a problem. So what if it doesn't scale entirely evenly on a different map size. It won't really be noticed in actual games for reasons already stated.
Happiness Broken by Map Size
- Thread starter Earthling
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iggymnrr
Deity
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City-states should not be overlooked either. Somewhere in these forums it was mentioned that there are 2 times as many city-states possible as there are opponents. Assuming the city-states are not disabled at game setup, say the map size has a minimum of 10 opponents allowing for as many as 20 city-states. Land will fill up quickly. Then try the same map without city-states.
How would this impact happiness in either game?
How would this impact happiness in either game?
Zhahz
PC Gamer
Can you really have a serious discussion based on assumptions?
Not necessarily. Larger map sizes usually means more civs and city states. You don't know for sure there will be more land unless you're a successful conqueror, and then you empire management issues are the same as always.
Again, not necessarily, because of my previous point. If the map is designed to hold more civs and city states, there's no reason for resources to be distributed any differently.
Shafer seems like a pretty bright guy, the Firaxis team is most likely made up bright people, we can see that a lot of testers are hardcore players from this very community (part of a mix). I'm guessing they will have addressed balance issues like this long before release.
I am going to summarize a view that I think has been expressed already...
Your objection is valid, and your analysis seems to be more or less correct. However, the objection to your objection is that many people (myself included) consider huge maps to be actually MORE balanced with the settings the way they are.
Prior to Civ 4, there was only one way to win huge maps, and that was to have many cities. Small civs would get crushed economically and militarily by large civs. If you wanted to play a competitive game with only a couple of cities, you had to play on very small maps.
Civ 4 changed or attempted to change this by making maintenance scale with number of cities. I'm not enough of an expert at Civ 4 to know if that made smaller empires competitive, but it certainly seemed to make having a small empire in a world of large empires a more viable option.
Your objection is to a bonus that really only helps small civs. Actually, you have a lot more to complain about than just a static happiness bonus... there is also social policies that benefit only the capital and the fact that social policy and golden age costs will scale with the number of cities you have (is this confirmed?). The latter, if true, would be a much bigger detriment to large empires than not enjoying the static happiness boost, in my opinion.
My opinion is that these advantages for small civs do not prevent you from playing as a large civ, they will just allow smaller civs to compete with your gigantic empire. Growth comes with a lot of advantages, and it is fitting that it come with some disadvantages as well. This makes growth a interesting decision... the "optimal" choice is not always to invade or build more settlers. Being able to play an interesting game with 5 cities or 500 is a good thing, in my opinion. And it is also a good thing that the game will feel very different depending on which you choose.
Regarding your competitiveness with the AI on harder difficulties, when the AI gets bonuses... have you confirmed that those bonuses are "per city"? If they are static, then you have no worries. Regardless, harder AI settings are supposed to be more of a challenge; if a particular level of difficulty is more difficult for huge maps than small ones, or vice versa, then just adjust your difficulty level to something that you enjoy. The game is about your enjoyment, not being able to play at a particular level.
You haven't even been reading what I'm saying in the first part. Again, that's not my complaint at all. Though your premises are shaky again, there's little evidence city growth can't occur fast early game - have a capital and core in the teens or 20s even in middle eras, we've seen basically as much on previews and demos too.
I'm sure part of the reason no one is addressing solutions the problem is because they don't actually understand it, many do not have experience with previous civ games or understood problems there either, but at least the thread will be around when other people show up and complain. This is just like saying "nobody notices that Marathon speed or whatever isn't balanced." Well, fine, some players may not notice or care, but that's not been true for the community, and it won't be true if there are major problems in civ5 either.
I don't see how this is a valid line of reasoning about anything on the forums at all- if you didn't want to post here, don't. If you want to just go wherever on the forums and post about, I dunno, ice cream then go ahead and try that, but you'll find other people in other threads have outlined topics of discussion in their OPs. But generally it is expected that a serious thread can be detailed by an OP and discussion will stay on topic.
So far the answer appears to be: nobody has a single solid suggestion that playing larger maps with larger empires won't be trouble. So then we have to expect that playing on huge maps will not be feasible the way it was in previous civ games. At least there are possibilities for improvement.
Oh, I've discussed elsewhere lots of things that cause problems on huge maps. A thread to discuss everything would get to complicated especially with inexperienced players or false "factoids" gathered from civ5 sources that aren't accurate and don't know what they are talking about. For instance I certainly don't like the ridiculousness that Domination victory has become relating to captals, nor problems we'll face in warfare and so on. But I would have thought if we just proposed ideas/gathered knowledge on happiness somebody would have some ideas to improve things, looks like not.
I appreciate your post though gruther. I am optimistic in that I do expect some of the other things you've listed they will have actually scaled in the game (or who knows, maybe happiness scales some places too, we don't really have technical details on the mechanics. Would have liked to find that out but we don't know yet).
But I think we will see that technology, culture for Social Policies, and so on probably will scale with mapsize, hope all these other folks aren't angry to find that out. It would be nice if they did well with their testing and balancing.
From what I understand about the problem you're presenting, we know enough about happiness gains such that a portion won't change depending on the map size, and this creates a happiness problem since the size of the empire will be different.Earthling said:
However, there's a difference between happiness gains and total happiness, which is happiness gains minus unhappiness. The unhappiness for # of cities might change depending on map size. For example, what if:
1) For standard map sizes, the unhappiness from number of cities is 2(#^1.5)
2) For huge map sizes, the unhappiness from number of cities is 2(#^1.2)
Where "#" is the number of cities. Don't anyone bring up "but we do know, it's 2 unhappiness per city", because this is false.
To add on this, in order to incorporate your problem with the static number of bonus happiness, that could also be worked into the unhappiness maintenance equation.
You didn't address my point that the unhappiness maintenance should depend not solely on map size, but also number of civs. The game should calculate some sort of "available city area / number of civs" to determine the unhappiness maintenance. The number of civs is just as important as the map size.
Right, sure, this is exactly on the lines of what I'm wondering - the question is for us to find out how it actually is in the game
Changing the unhappiness per number of cities, adjusting resources or anything else with the current bonuses we know of I could see as a solution - or they could well have a better solution in place (but we don't have evidence of it yet)
For that last part - I certainly don't disagree with that, that's a good idea, could better account for players setting extra/fewer civs and city states if it adjusted for initial number of those. That's what I would hope to find out - maybe we'll learn if they do have such formulas in the game. If not though you are right that they probably could - it doesn't make sense in civ5 for happiness to not scale when things like tech and culture almost certainly still will (though maybe these ignore number of civs as well).
I'm just hoping they didn't overlook these other settings - making tech, happiness, etc... all dependent on difficulty or something like that (we know difficulty is a part and definitely influences the AI) and forgetting to adjust to really make the game balanced.
I expect gamespeed is properly accounted for though but that's why I didn't bring that up in this thread much, I'm sure they would have gotten that all right. At least, I think most fans would really really hope after they didn't scale things properly on speeds like Quick/Marathon in civ4.
When you say that it won't be feasible, what do you mean? Also, you have used the word "unbalanced" before, and I'm not certain exactly how you mean that. I may have missed it, but I don't think you've made your specific objection clear.
Based on what I've read, I could interpret the problem to be any of:
1) The harder AIs will have insurmountable advantages on huge maps.
2) It will be impossible to play a game with lots of cities on a huge map.
3) It will be impossible to play a game with lots of large (20+) cities on a huge map.
4) Having many cities will have disadvantages with regards to average city size/happiness over having few cities (on any map size).
5) The average size of cities will be smaller for large maps/few civs than for small maps/many civs.
6) Something else?
I would respond differently to any of those objections, so if you clear up exactly what you mean, we will be able to respond better. To say that "playing on huge maps will not be feasible the way it was in previous civ games" leaves too much to our interpretation, and people respond to what they THINK you meant.
From what I can interpret (I hope I got it right) is that unlike in Civ IV where maintenance could be offset by a few cities specializing in commerce, you are limited to how much happiness you can actually generate. Cities can self-sustain their population, but the unhappiness generated by number if cities will eventually catch up to your excess happiness.
The problem is, if happiness does not scale with map size, the limit to your empire's size does not change with the map size.
Each city is an opportunity to build more happiness buildings, so each new city will be able to increase the limit to your empire's population. Since huge maps have room for more cities, then the effective limit to your empire's population will depend on map size.
Unless you meant to imply that there is a limit to the number of cities that will be possible, but the happiness mechanic does not put a limit on the number of cities possible (once again, because of happiness buildings)...
Others have perhaps said this better than I. If that is the objection, I think it is clearly incorrect, based on what we know about happiness. Note, though, that nothing was said or implied about average city size in the objection or the response.
The first three could all be problems here, the point of the thread is to try to find out what in gamecode/mechanics actually results or what may be patched/fixed. (for instance, people elsewhere keep saying resources add happiness for every single instance of the resource, which contradicts the game manual quoted in the OP, still don't really know the answer) Number 4 is specifically not what we should be arguing over, it's all right for the game to give benefits or penalties in that regard, but if it wasn't clear it wasn't clear enough, sorry. Except I would not use the word "impossible" because several people would continue to misinterpret things and try to "prove you can have a big city" which is not the concern. Instead it could be said "needlessly difficult and micromanagement intensive" or something similar.
One additional concern would be that various aspects of the game play differently or become meaningless. Social Policies focused only on your capital, world wonders which provide static bonuses that mean very little on large maps, etc... are a problem. It's unknown how all the individual civ traits/units/buildings will also stack up - but for example I'm certain cultural costs change based on mapsize, or the French become absolutely ridiculously overpowered in getting SPs on larger and more open maps. It's somewhat to be expected individual cities/wonders could mean less on larger maps, but we don't want any to end up absolutely worthless so that thing (wonder, policy, etc...) rarely contributes at all to the game.
edit: A good example of the above. Anyone who played civ4 obviously knows how national wonders and cathedrals had prerequisite building requirements scaled by mapsize. This was very deliberate and had a very strong effect on balance - acquiring Oxford university for instance. Most players saw this as reasonable balance and a good thing in the end as much as I ever heard.
Now, as far as we know, national wonders in civ5 often require buildings in all of your cities. If you're going to have more cities on huge maps these get much more difficult to use (the AI, for instance, might not even understand or be able to do so anymore on larger maps where it builds too many cities). We're unlikely to see it being competitive to have, and doubly so to see the AI pursue, strategies of just like 3 cities on a huge map that would easily snag national wonders (and remain more competitive) on smaller maps. On a smaller map your 3 cities and national wonders could work -and the AI might even be able to do that too. But they simply could not compare to 15 cities and no wonders on a larger map no matter what (but then the latter empire will almost never be able to build any of those wonders) So the end result of wonders that can't/won't be built except in very rare circumstances is a problem.
Now, not all National Wonders relate to happiness in the example above, but for those that do or similar game features which would become unnecessarily difficult or suboptimal to use, it would be nice just to have things scale correctly/fixed up with the game settings.
I do think all the consideration and suggestions on what may adjusted/changed is really helpful though, there are a lot of possibilities and there may not actually be a problem if something was already implemented.
Thank you, that makes things much clearer. I guess where we differ is that I think if you change "impossible" to "difficult", the we are talking about the relative difficulty of prospering as a large civ versus prospering as a small one. I am of the opinion that maintaining and growing a large civ should be difficult, because a large civ will have a gigantic military and economy.
For the sake of clarity, do you mind if we start referring to "sparse" maps rather than huge maps? People have mentioned huge maps will/may have more civs, which means the area per civ, and therefore cities per civ, would be fairly constant. A sparse map could be a standard map with 2 civs, or a huge map with 7. The opposite situation would be a dense map.
Your point, I imagine, is that on a sparse map, all of the civs would be "large" relative to other game settings. This would change the dynamics and pacing of the game, making expanding to your natural limits more difficult than on denser maps. The problem, then, is that on a dense map, a large civ has an advantage which needs to be compensated for, while on a sparse map, a large civ is the normal way to play... is that right? You aren't concerned that the other players on your map will have an advantage over you, but that the game will play in a different way than on denser maps. Is that right?
I can understand the worry that the developers may have balanced the game in a way that isn't fun for your style of play. That is a valid concern. My expectation is that they balanced it to be best played with a fairly constant area per civ. I don't think that it is unreasonable that they did this... after all, sparsely populated maps or densely populated maps are sort of special settings.
I often play Civ 4 with all 34 civs on a small or tiny map. It is a completely different game, and very unbalanced, but it is still fun for me. I hope that Civ 5 is still fun for you, but if it isn't you might be able to mod it easily... I'm no modder but I changed tech rates in Civ 4... I'm fairly sure tweaking the amount of happiness various things (difficulty, luxuries, SP, etc) give you should be an easy change, and then you could play the game the way you want to with rules that make it fun.
PS - only a bit more than 1 more day!
remconius
Deity
I think we all have to get into civ 5 mode. Civ 5 works in a different way than civ 4.
empire wideness
As happiness is empire wide it means in order to support big cities, you will need support cities. Cities that produce more happiness than they need.
If you have a city of size 4, it generates 5 unhappiness (2*1+4) and could produce 8 or 12 unhappiness to support other cities to grow large. It's like in real life where countries consist of several big cities and also smaller cities. Also it's a game mechanic....
Small vs large cities
In terms of science 3 cities of size 10 should do similar science as 6 cities size 5. The difference is that for 6 cities need 6 libraries instead of 3. You also need to support 6 more unhappiness, etc.
I reckon that in civ 5, one key decision will be to balance the number of cities and the number of small vs big cities. I do not think you kan have all huge specialist cities like you could have in civ 4.
empire wideness
As happiness is empire wide it means in order to support big cities, you will need support cities. Cities that produce more happiness than they need.
If you have a city of size 4, it generates 5 unhappiness (2*1+4) and could produce 8 or 12 unhappiness to support other cities to grow large. It's like in real life where countries consist of several big cities and also smaller cities. Also it's a game mechanic....
Small vs large cities
In terms of science 3 cities of size 10 should do similar science as 6 cities size 5. The difference is that for 6 cities need 6 libraries instead of 3. You also need to support 6 more unhappiness, etc.
I reckon that in civ 5, one key decision will be to balance the number of cities and the number of small vs big cities. I do not think you kan have all huge specialist cities like you could have in civ 4.
It sounds like your concerns aren't strictly related to map size. If you play a huge map with e.g. 15 other civs, you'll likely have the same amount of room to expand as you would on a standard map with 7-8 civs. And conversely, if you play on the standard map with only 2 or 3 other civs, you'll also have a lot of room to expand. If I understand your argument correctly, you're associating "large maps" with "more domestic room per civ", which isn't necessarily the case.
With that out of the way, then, it seems like you're saying that if you have a larger starting distance between capitals (as on a large map with the standard number of civs), expanding should be easier (in terms of the happiness problem at least). Why? I certainly don't see why the rules/modifiers need to be different in this situation.
The only point I'd agree with is if the AIs get overly generous bonuses in this situation. But if that were the case, the solution is clearly to fix the AI's magic bonuses rather than change the general game mechanics. And that's assuming that the as-yet unspecified AI bonuses are unbalanced, which I think is a big jump to make based on mere speculation.
With that out of the way, then, it seems like you're saying that if you have a larger starting distance between capitals (as on a large map with the standard number of civs), expanding should be easier (in terms of the happiness problem at least). Why? I certainly don't see why the rules/modifiers need to be different in this situation.
The only point I'd agree with is if the AIs get overly generous bonuses in this situation. But if that were the case, the solution is clearly to fix the AI's magic bonuses rather than change the general game mechanics. And that's assuming that the as-yet unspecified AI bonuses are unbalanced, which I think is a big jump to make based on mere speculation.
oopsy poopsy
Warlord
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I am not reading manuals and such yet, but doesn't the mechanic you're talking about here essentially push players towards more expansion on sparse or large maps and isn't that a good thing? I really don't see it as broken if there's a game mechanic that is indirectly making it harder to grow a small number of large towns on a map with lots of open space. Maybe it's not realistic and maybe it nerfs a specific strategy on a specific type of map, but altering strategy to compensate for these imbalances is part of the fun of civ games. If you have to slow your individual city development to expand while you tech and get more happiness buildings for each city, I'm okay with that 'cause it's better than the alternative of civs not having borders touch each other until the 18th century because there's too much space left out there. Really, this will be a timing issue more than anything and you'll have to wait and see for that.
Sure, if it becomes very obvious that the difference in max city sizes between small maps and large maps is very different during the early to mid game, there will probably be a tweak in a patch. I'm not saying that's the case, 'cause until played it's quite possible things in the manual don't end up meaning quite what you think they will. For instance, maybe it's an issue, but we'll all quickly discover that growth curves and logical progressions mean you shouldn't ever be hitting these caps anyway (and since the penalty's different now, whose to say it won't be worth the cost?). I'm not saying that'll be the case either, just that civ isn't a series of individual mini-games (the happiness mini-game, the science mini-game, the warfare mini-game, etc...). These things all work together and what may appear broken in one aspect can become a non-issue because of any number of correlations to other parts of the game, so analyzing how happiness will work it valuable to all us players, but making claims about how it will function in relation to the rest of the game is pretty hard to say until you get to interact with it.
Now, if it turns out after some play that playing on large and huge maps without maxed civs requires lots of small cities, to the point it's the only reasonable option, then I'm with you, but I'm easily withholding judgment until the geniuses around these parts get their hands on the thing and wade through a GOTM or two and teach each other how to kick the crap out of the game. Just my 2 cents.
Sure, if it becomes very obvious that the difference in max city sizes between small maps and large maps is very different during the early to mid game, there will probably be a tweak in a patch. I'm not saying that's the case, 'cause until played it's quite possible things in the manual don't end up meaning quite what you think they will. For instance, maybe it's an issue, but we'll all quickly discover that growth curves and logical progressions mean you shouldn't ever be hitting these caps anyway (and since the penalty's different now, whose to say it won't be worth the cost?). I'm not saying that'll be the case either, just that civ isn't a series of individual mini-games (the happiness mini-game, the science mini-game, the warfare mini-game, etc...). These things all work together and what may appear broken in one aspect can become a non-issue because of any number of correlations to other parts of the game, so analyzing how happiness will work it valuable to all us players, but making claims about how it will function in relation to the rest of the game is pretty hard to say until you get to interact with it.
Now, if it turns out after some play that playing on large and huge maps without maxed civs requires lots of small cities, to the point it's the only reasonable option, then I'm with you, but I'm easily withholding judgment until the geniuses around these parts get their hands on the thing and wade through a GOTM or two and teach each other how to kick the crap out of the game. Just my 2 cents.
We don't know that you're going to generate 2 unhappiness from that 1 city. We have no idea how unhappiness per city works. I will tell you though, that if it's 2 per city, you will see Infinite City Sprawl, and India dominating the game.remconius said:
The main point in this thread is you receive 2 different types of happiness bonuses. One is constant, and one multiplies per-city. So the formula for happiness looks like:
- Happiness = ax+b
Where x is your number of cities, a is your happiness per-city bonuses, and b is your constant bonuses. An example of "a" is a stadium or policy that gives happiness per city, and an example of "b" is a luxury resource.
The main argument Earthling has (correct me if I'm wrong) is that "x" has a higher cap, but "a" and "b" stay the same with larger map sizes. What this means is with higher values of x, you have a lower bonus happiness constant. This will result in a lower on-average happiness for larger maps, as there are more cities. This was solved in Civ4 by giving lower maintenance levels per-city to on larger maps.
Le Roi Soleil
Warlord
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It seems that a lot of people are missing the point about the happiness cap. All it does is put a damper on city growth...nothing else. It essentially throws out some portion of all excess food (which is what goes into the growth bucket) generated. So what do you do if your civ goes into negative happiness? You divert which tiles your citizens are working so that no excess food is generated to begin with (which will raise your production and gold) and thus nothing wasted, and you go on a building/units binge, presumably constructing happiness buildings in the process to get you back over the happy cap.
The point is that you needn't waste any resources when you go into unhappy territory. Just don't produce any excess food (put yourself in a position of zero growth by design) until you get back over the cap and it appears that nothing is really lost. Perhaps I have misunderstood the happiness rules, but I don't think so.
The point is that you needn't waste any resources when you go into unhappy territory. Just don't produce any excess food (put yourself in a position of zero growth by design) until you get back over the cap and it appears that nothing is really lost. Perhaps I have misunderstood the happiness rules, but I don't think so.
What you describe is correct for an "unhappy" civ (you lose 2/3rds of your surplus food but everyone is still fed) but there are further penalties for being "very unhappy" including I believe some form of combat penalty for your units.
Le Roi Soleil
Warlord
- Joined
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- 122
Sure, but you'd have to be a bit unlucky/of an idiot to get to -10 happiness. Unless you're actively trying to screw yourself up, reaching -10 can pretty much only happen during wartime if your supplies of luxury goods get cut off. As population is the greatest contributor to unhappiness and growth slows way down when you reach -1, getting to -10 without a very messy war would seem to require something epically stupid: either irrational annexing or settler spam, both of which are irrelevant to me strategically because I simply won't do that.
Long story short, I'm not actually all that worried about flirting with negative happiness now and again. Level 1 unhappiness is hardly crippling, especially in the late game.
