How bad is the expansion tech penalty?

[blizzrd]

Sounds horrible, because the human player is almost always ahead in tech.

Agreed.

Why is there any need to change from the existing mechanic? If it ain't broke, don't fix it would be my view.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

I prefer staying on the timeline so slowing down (human) runaway civs is better than helping the rest catch up.

That is evidently an absolute necessity since so many UHVs and events in this game (most prominently the spawning of new civs) are set at specific dates/turn numbers.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Yeah, I've said before that I would prefer the penalties to grow logistically, i.e. exponentially at first until approaching a certain limit.

A more realistic approach would be a quadratic growth in cost IMO.

Say you have N cities. There are a total of N(N-1)/2 connections between them that you would need to maintain to uphold the integrity of your civilization (i.e. prevent any 1 city from becoming alienated from the others).

 

[Leoreth]

Why is there any need to change from the existing mechanic? If it ain't broke, don't fix it would be my view.

I think that people go out of their way to never control more than 10 cities shows that it's broken.

 

[blizzrd]

Personally, I go out of my way to stay at or under 10 cities while I'm trying to be tech leader. Then when I want to expand (such as for Domination attempt) I have no qualms about taking additional cities. That doesn't constitute "never" wanting to have more than 10 cities, it just pushes for optimal gameplay within the mechanics available.

What's broken about that?

 

[Jusos2108]

I think that people go out of their way to never control more than 10 cities shows that it's broken.

I constantly take more than 10 cities early in my games, if the 11th, 12th or 13th city is a valuable one. Good cities barely hinder your teching speed and developing cities early usually pays off. The balance is quite delicate, which just shows that the current system works.

Also staying under ten cities for quite some time is often beneficial due to the maintenance costs.

 

[calad]

I constantly take more than 10 cities early in my games, if the 11th, 12th or 13th city is a valuable one. Good cities barely hinder your teching speed and developing cities early usually pays off. The balance is quite delicate, which just shows that the current system works.

Also staying under ten cities for quite some time is often beneficial due to the maintenance costs.

Point is that currently only player fully understands mechanics and has huge exploit advantage over it. Simply the best strategy is make 10 ahistorical super cities. All alternative strategies dont work because of increasing tech penalty. Have 20 cities and research is very difficult.

Cant we have some other mechanic to prevent runaway civics? Like giving commercial penalty if civ is too effective? It would allow player to have as many cities as possible, makinf game more realitic and desirable.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The problem with your proposed commerce-leader penalty is that then the game would be punishing you for playing well.

I mean, that's some civ 5 shi t there.

To be fair, the post-tenth city penalty isn't much better. In fact, it's probably worse.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Point is that currently only player fully understands mechanics and has huge exploit advantage over it. Simply the best strategy is make 10 ahistorical super cities. All alternative strategies dont work because of increasing tech penalty. Have 20 cities and research is very difficult.

Cant we have some other mechanic to prevent runaway civics? Like giving commercial penalty if civ is too effective? It would allow player to have as many cities as possible, makinf game more realitic and desirable.

Yeah, no.

You don't punish players for playing well. Which is what punishing "effectiveness" does.
Like someone stated earlier, a big flaw in Civ5. I like Civ5 better than most of the other posters here,
but the fact that you literally have to raze every city that isn't a capital and
resettle your own cities on top of them to avoid unhappiness or turns wasted building a Courthouse just sucks.

So what if the cities are ahistorical?
I'd rather have the flexibility to do that than be shoehorned into one historical path.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I wouldn't describe the post-tenth city penalty system as "flexible", but would describe it as "shoehorning", albeit not a particularly historical one. In fact, what you've said applies to the current system much more then to the proposed one (in civ5, conquered cities cost global happiness, in RFC all settled cities post-10th penalize your research).

I'm actually fine with just increasing the limit to 15, since 15 cities is a decent enough empire.

 

[SheaferDaDawg]

If anything, I would be more inclined to extend the city limit based to something like 12 or 15 cities, of all things. While this might seem strange, colonial powers often overexpand and slow down their tech rate, which is a reason that Prussia often spawns facing muskets. Why punish expansion in this manner? If we were to attempt to change this, then make it so that the increase is indeed some kind of parabola or similar idea, so that eventually REALLY big civs can tech effectively.

Alternatively, why not leave tech costs the same but increase hammer costs for cities without a courthouse/certain distance from palace? The idea would be that large empires that are bugged down in red tape have less of a problem with research than they do with infrastructure, especially when the tape is not present at all (pre courthouse).

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I wouldn't describe the post-tenth city penalty system as "flexible", but would describe it as "shoehorning", albeit not a particularly historical one. In fact, what you've said applies to the current system much more then to the proposed one (in civ5, conquered cities cost global happiness, in RFC all settled cities post-10th penalize your research).

I'm actually fine with just increasing the limit to 15, since 15 cities is a decent enough empire.

When I mentioned "flexible" and "shoehorning", I was referring to calad's taking issue with "ahistorical" cities.
I honestly couldn't care less about playing historically, even when going after UHVs.
But I agree, if we had to, let's just increase the city limit to 15.

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, maybe we need to get on the same page on what the purpose of the large empire penalty is first, before we can continue to figure out if it needs to be tweaked or replaced.

I don't know Rhye's original motivation for including it but I'm sure it's a direct consequence of limited AI expasion because of the settler maps and stability. For every AI civs, there is a theoretical peak empire size based on what they settle and usually conquer. There are of course outlier games where a civ manages to conquer much more territory than usual, but even then it usually collapses from overexpansion.

At the same time the general game mechanics of Civ4 are still true: all else being equal, larger empire -> more research. But the AI empire size is limited by its semi-scripted expansion and its inability to handle the stability mechanic. While the human player is not as constrained by these limitations. So I think after Rhye realised that most players simply expanded to a large empire to outtech the AI, he said "well large empires get a tech penalty then".

I think the driving motivation was to curb players who tech too fast. My problem with this "fix" is that people tend to maximize their research under this new rule by making the 10 cities they are allowed as productive as possible, resulting in 20 tile supercities everywhere. This is in my opinion a way of playing the game forces on you with no good reason. Also (though not everyone cares about that), it encourages razing cities and in general a non-historical city density, especially in certain parts of the world. You may care about that or not, but people who care should not be penalized by the game.

This is why I proposed a system of diminishing returns. In my opinion it has several advantages:
- your tech speed is reduced no matter if your commerce output is generated through 10 or 20 cities (which should be irrelevant with that supposed goal)
- if only civs who are first in score are targeted, multiple civs who suffer from the current rule or need adjusted tech modifiers to cope (like Russia) would do better
- in doubt, supercities are probably still better even by vanilla game mechanics, but you'd be more competitive if you like to keep more dense settling patterns

The only disadvantage I can detect is that strategies which revolve around min/maxing and gaming around the current 10 city limit are now not as effective anymore. Which considering their gamey approach is not much of a disadvantage at all as far as I'm concerned.

 

[SheaferDaDawg]

I understand where you are coming from, but think that the penalty should not be so outright and specific. Why not stick with tech costs, but use an "s-shaped" (forgot the name) equation to effect it, so that while costs will continually increase with 15+ cities, the increase in cost gradually lessens to the point that settling cities once more becomes economically viable after enough have been settled. This means that medium-large empires would be possible without huge tech hits, larger empires(rapidly growing for a domination win) would get economy hits, and super large empires would still have penalties but would benefit from expansion, thus allowing one to win a domination victory/ colonial UHV with more crowded city placement. On the other hand, I would consider the first in score penalty to be effective provided the penalty still results in a good, leading player to maintain their position.

Alternatively, a different approach entirely could be taken via unit maintenance or infrastructure costs, as stated earlier, which would represent growing red tape and would affect larger empires.

 

[Leoreth]

But my main issue is with the only tenuous connection between number of cities and tech costs. Tying tech cost penalties to an arbitrary number of cities makes no sense because all depends on the actual commerce output of these cities. Why not base the penalty on what you actually want to balance, relative commerce output?

 

[SheaferDaDawg]

Yes, but the issue with only affecting the highest player is that you are punishing success. Sure, we could utilize some kind of commerce reduction, but then players would want to wait and set up for rapid expansion before beginning to reach the high end of the board. The thing about high score empires and large empires is that they are almost always the same thing. How much of a commerce penalty would you suggest? Enough to keep the number one civ slowed, but not to the point that it is overtaken frequently, I hope? Also, if we are talking about freedom to settle empires as one prefers, then could we please make the razing penalty temporary?

 

[Lone Wolf]

When I mentioned "flexible" and "shoehorning", I was referring to calad's taking issue with "ahistorical" cities.

He didn't take any issue with cities in "unhistorical places", as I understood it; he referred to the post-10 research penalty as unhistorically limiting.

 

[Hippo8085]

Why not do it by a combination of land area and current advancement?

Land Area: Though still hurting civs like Russia, it gives no disadvantage for packing cities, and depending on the area, more cities may be beneficial. Take a base land area you think should be the "normal" and then probably every multiple of that you get a penalty. Only problems being the Russia mentioned above and it continues to make culture bad.

Current Advancement: Simple: if a civilization is over average in techs researched, it gets a penalty, and if below, gets a bonus. The game already has a method for telling advancement, and this should also discourage beelining as you would be counted as more advanced for having a technology way ahead of your time. Problems are game speed (needs to do the calculation much more often) and near ties in advancement.

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, but the issue with only affecting the highest player is that you are punishing success. Sure, we could utilize some kind of commerce reduction, but then players would want to wait and set up for rapid expansion before beginning to reach the high end of the board. The thing about high score empires and large empires is that they are almost always the same thing. How much of a commerce penalty would you suggest? Enough to keep the number one civ slowed, but not to the point that it is overtaken frequently, I hope? Also, if we are talking about freedom to settle empires as one prefers, then could we please make the razing penalty temporary?

The penalty would obviously not be so high that other civs can overtake you by having less commerce (let's ignore tech modifiers of individual civs here), that would be counterintuitive, bad design and the opposite of what the principle of diminishing returns is trying to accomplish.

The goal is to reduce relative differences in commerce, not total commerce output.

And I don't think it's even punishing success. Every additional point of commerce you acquire increases your tech speed. Through diminishing returns you just won't get the full effect out of this point of commerce, but only an effective fraction (like 0.8). In that regard it's even less punishing than the current rule which punishes you for having too many cities, regardless of how well you're actually doing.

 

[NorwegianSalmon]

Current Advancement: Simple: if a civilization is over average in techs researched, it gets a penalty, and if below, gets a bonus. The game already has a method for telling advancement, and this should also discourage beelining as you would be counted as more advanced for having a technology way ahead of your time. Problems are game speed (needs to do the calculation much more often) and near ties in advancement.

The method for measuring advancement is to my knowledge simply counting techs. So it would end up actually encourage researching only expensive techs (and passing out on old not too vital technologies such as Meditation). And we definitely don't want people to speculate in not researching technologies for any more reasons than they already do (delaying Scientific Method infinitely is gamey enough as it is).