How is everyone finding the 1.2.5 production changes?

[pjotroos]

It's been a little over three months now since the massive balancing patch that revamped the flow of all eras. Among other things, it has singificantly changes how production works - with the cost of buildings now increasing based on the number of settlements converted into cities, and the number of non-warehouse buildings within the city. Neither units nor wonders are impacted by those penalties.

There was a lively discussion about it when it was first introduced. I'm wondering where everyone is at, now that it's been around for a while, and we had a chance to play a good number of games on both versions.

To answer my own question: I was enthusiastic about it intially, but - with over twenty games through all eras done now - I think I've landed on the current implementation being actively detrimental, and a straight downgrade from what we had previously. The key reasons:
1. Balance is completely off. If the idea behind the extra 10% for each city was to encourage playing fewer, more developed cities, it has failed utterly. That penalty very quickly gets dwarfed by the incremental per-building penalty. You will eventually run into a production wall, whether you have 3 cities or 6, so I still go for more cities.
2. The scaling penalty counts obsolete buildings. The popular opinion in the earlier versions of the game was that - past a certain point in the era - there is very little value in completing age-specific buildings, since most of their yields will be gone after the age transition. With 1.2.5, "very little value" got upgraded to "actively detrimental". If you decide to throw all your production and gold on a single city in exploration to get every building done, that city will be in utter shambles at the start of modern age.
3. As a result of the two points above, what I build has become incredibly homogenised. All my cities look the same. Production is king. Science and culture is always worth prioritising. The influence and special effect buildings are nice to have. Food and gold buildings become a harder sell, since I can get both of those through towns just as easily. I typically play at around the settlement cap, and so I can't remember the last time I bothered to get Managerie or Radio Tower done. Why on earth would I kneecap my already production-starved cities with those? It's a problem solved previously in Civilization VI, where your most common quarters would gradually become harder & harder to build, whereas the underrepresented ones kept their production cost cheap. That allowed for some interesting trade offs, which just don't exist in the current setup. If I have 5 Universities and no Banks, the 6th city will still need the same amount of turns to complete either, so I might as well get that 6th University.
4. On the subject of yields more broadly - production was always high value, but pre-1.2.5, on higher difficulties, I would occasionally be in a situation where I'd run science or culture project, because all high value production was done and the next thing I wanted was locked behind the research. This just doesn't happen anymore. In modern especially, I'll complete multiple science & culture techs in the time it takes me to build Military Academy. I then immediately need to build a Railway Station, and sometimes a Port, and then a Factory. If you wanted to hard build all those, you are locked in for such a long time into building must-haves, while zipping through all the objectives. Gold is plentiful, though, so I buy more buildings than I build in the modern era. That can't be by design.
5. Last but not least, specialists exarcebate the issue. By mid-Exploration at the latest, the wonders start taking less time to complete than buildings, because the scaling cost only applies to the latter. That and the snowball means you can get most of those, even on Deity, and - really - should get all the ones you can, because plopping one down next to your science or culture district will give you more science or culture from specialists, whereas your food, gold and happiness buildings will not. I'm at the point where I don't even massively care which city the wonder is most suitable for, in terms of its unique effect, half the time. Borobudur doesn't go into "need that food & happiness" city. It goes on a tile next to two districts that are next to multiple resources or mountains.

In a sentence, I think this needs to go back to the drawing board. Production was never this important. Low value yields were never this much of a noob trap. And exploration age now sits in an extremely awkward spot, where you can complete all the victory paths you care about quite quickly, and then you just sort of sit there, waiting for it to finish, trying not to produce too many buildings that will kill your production in modern, or too many units that will eat up your gold on the maintenance costs, with culture & science projects a tempting option not because there's something you need to unlock right now, but because the future research & future civics can get you past the checkpoint faster.

 

[stealth_nsk]

1. I finished several games on Immortal and I don't see what you see here. Even when I play with more cities, like with Maya, I totally could build everything I need.

2. Old buildings are supposed to be overbuilt, that's the idea. Maybe that's because it works for me? Now there's an interesting balance - you could keep old buildings for some time, since their base yields are higher, but eventually you want to overbuild them as nee ones are strictly better.

3. In my games city specialization is often more about order of things to build, but the production system helps with specialization, not hinder it. I think bigger problem is the balance between different building types - food ones are really not that fun. I also disagree on gold buildings - they provide additional resource slots and it's massive.

4. Again, I still often run science and culture projects.

5. Wonder value surely degraded, but that's expected with the number of wonders you have in the game. But I think this point a bit inconsistent. Building wonders in cities where they gove strong adjacency bonuses is essentially city specialization.

 

[Leucarum]

I think you're very right about cities being homogenized. There are clear buildings I need to prioritize. I don't make specialization decisions really in the way that would be nice.

I agree that the scaling of obsolete buildings is probably a bad idea.

I do run projects, often as a consequence of the above points - not wanting to always build buildings. Though more often it's better to just build more units. Which I think it a separate issue, it encourages military bloat, and I prefer the game when there are fewer units to consider.

Balance is weird - especially if you play an economic Civ that doesn't care and can just buy anything almost regardless of cost. And urban centers are weird in that at the start of an era they are often better than cities and it's only once you nlock tier 2 buildings that you have to make choices.

I think it's a step in the right direction though, I definitely want to be pushed towards having 3-5 cities max for micromanagement reasons! I do think a better way of doing it would have been to have cities count double to the settlement cap, and add some real teeth to going over said settlement cap so you would be actually discouraged from going over it.

 

[uppi]

I think there are some serious issues, but I don't think I want to go back to the "all the cities, all the buildings" of before.

1. I think balance in Antiquity is fine. I don't build too many buildings, I rarely have more than 2 cities and those are often busy building wonders anyway. And if you are avoiding the noob traps and are conscious about overbuilding, Exploration is also mostly okayish. But then in Modern it really breaks down: Buildings are quite expensive for what they do to begin with and on top of that comes the penalty. And you get so much yields from other sources that building non-essential buildings is often a waste of time.

2. I like that obsolete buildings count, because this encourages overbuilding. That Altar which was vital in Antiquity but is now mostly useless? Get rid of it, slap a warehouse on top or something else. And if you are not really profiting from a building this age? Maybe refrain from building it. This (somewhat) limits city sprawl when you are playing well. And I think here could be a solution to at least some of the issues: Give more production bonuses to overbuilding. These could cancel out the obsolete building penalty to some degree and give obsolete buildings a purpose as a foundation for the buildings you want.

3. Yeah, that worked a little too well. They wanted us to prioritize, so we prioritize: Warehouses, production, culture, science, nothing else. I don't think the uniformity of cities is too much of a problem, because the map does influence my decisions. If I only have options for a +1 Amphitheater, I might not build it, even if I have the spare production. What I do think is a problem is that food buildings are essentially noob traps, happiness buildings are at best circumstantial and gold buildings are not much better. Something needs to happen to those, because right now the game would be better without some of those buildings. What I also don't like is the warehouse spam. Usually at the end of exploration, I spend all the spare cash on buying every possible warehouse building on the map, because these are just too beneficial and a warehouse is never a bad thing (in contrast to other buildings, exceptions only apply to very cramped cities where you need to leave space for something essential).

4. I think running a science or culture project instead of building something is not a bad thing, because it means you need to make a decision instead of just building everything available. I also don't buy too many buildings in cities in Modern as I need most of my cash elsewhere. I often buy railroads, ports and factories in towns, because they are much cheaper there anyway (especially when they are factory towns). The cities just try producing them. Exceptions do apply, when a rail station is a critical link for example.

5. I don't think this is too much of a problem, but then I do like wonder spamming. The wonders I want go where they will be built quickly, anyway. It is just those wonders which are optional which get placed mainly because of their adjacency. And managing to get that +5 production/science spot is really satisfying.

But I also have some other issues:

6. It devalues unique buildings. The penalty applies to them and they apply the penalty to other buildings and you cannot even get rid of them. An Antiquity UB is balanced for Antiquity, so by Modern their yields are not really what you want for something that gets you a 5% production penalty. If the UQ effect is good, that is fine, but for less helpful UQ effects it can be a bad idea to build them in the long run. You would rather have a civ with a unique improvement which you can spam without worry. And unique buildings in Modern are rarely worth their cost.

7. Communication of the effect is bad. I think the converting to city popup warns you about the increased cost, but I don't know whether the 5% penalty for buildings is communicated anywhere. It is certainly not obvious. How is someone who is not actively following the game supposed to know that it is often a bad idea to build that garden?

8. On the topic of noobs: I think this change has really crippled the AI. From like mid-Exploration, the yields of the AI tend to stagnate, because the AI does not know how to handle this and builds huge messes of cities sprawling with all the buildings (including all the obsolete buildings). Conquer a city from the AI on Modern and weep at the libraries and gardens which still occupy space. With this, the AI incurs massive production penalties, cancelling out any production bonuses it has and rendering itself unable to do anything.

 

[pjotroos]

This is exactly the discussion I was hoping for

1. I finished several games on Immortal and I don't see what you see here. Even when I play with more cities, like with Maya, I totally could build everything I need.

I feel my point here was along the lines of exactly what you are describing - the extra penalty cost from having more cities isn't that noticable, because it gets mushed together with the penalty for buildings within the city, so - 2 cities or 4 - you build broadly the same stuff. Comes down to what you define as "everything I need". I tend to always get my production and science buildings in, the monument, market & maybe lighthouse most of the time.

2. Old buildings are supposed to be overbuilt, that's the idea. Maybe that's because it works for me? Now there's an interesting balance - you could keep old buildings for some time, since their base yields are higher, but eventually you want to overbuild them as nee ones are strictly better.

The only antiquity building I'd hold on to is a monument if I don't bother getting both culture buildings in exploration. Otherwise, I always overbuild. My problem specifically is that the penalty from obsolete buildings applies in full even while overbuilding, so you aren't really encouraged to overbuild so much as permanently punished for having built it in the first place (or for AI building it if you convert a conquered settlement into a city). I know how to avoid it, but that means the play is never building about one third of the buildings. I think it makes the game shallower. The answer to "do I want to build an inn to speed up my early growth" is always no, unless you fancy slapping what's effectively a permanent production nerf for the whole rest of the game (since it stays there through all of exploration, and modern ends before you replace everything).

3. In my games city specialization is often more about order of things to build, but the production system helps with specialization, not hinder it. I think bigger problem is the balance between different building types - food ones are really not that fun. I also disagree on gold buildings - they provide additional resource slots and it's massive.

This is the key thing for me. What forces you to change the build order between cities? Cause for me, it's warehouse=production > science=culture > gold, and food & happiness are basically no value. Adjacencies never really influence it, as I'd never convert a settlement into a city if it didn't have two decent resource adjacencies, a semi-decent culture spot, and a room for some yield boosts from wonders. Also, question specifically on gold buildings. Before factories in modern, do you always have more high value resources than available slots? I find antiquity can be 50/50, largely dependant on the number of camels I can improve or trade for, and in exploration I always have more room than resources to slot in, especially if I manage to grab Tomb of Askia & Grand Bazaar (which I almost always go for, as they are strictly better than gold buildings).

4. Again, I still often run science and culture projects.

Not a loaded question - when do you find it useful? In the early parts of the era? Before working on future techs & civics?

5. Wonder value surely degraded, but that's expected with the number of wonders you have in the game. But I think this point a bit inconsistent. Building wonders in cities where they gove strong adjacency bonuses is essentially city specialization.

To clarify, my point was "why is the wonder production cost not affected"? At minimum, by the number of cities you have. It exarcebates the issue of all your production going into more production, science & culture. I don't massively care to build a wonder that will give some happiness adjacency on a building, since that's not where the specialists will be going. So in a way, sure, my cities are specialised. But they're all specialised in the exact same thing.

I think there are some serious issues, but I don't think I want to go back to the "all the cities, all the buildings" of before.

100%, I wouldn't want that, either. I just find the current meta equally as stale. Building priorities haven't change, except for making it even better to go for all wonders & warehouse buildings everywhere.

1. I think balance in Antiquity is fine. I don't build too many buildings, I rarely have more than 2 cities and those are often busy building wonders anyway. And if you are avoiding the noob traps and are conscious about overbuilding, Exploration is also mostly okayish. But then in Modern it really breaks down: Buildings are quite expensive for what they do to begin with and on top of that comes the penalty. And you get so much yields from other sources that building non-essential buildings is often a waste of time.

Agreed. Overbuilding penalty is rarely a problem in Exploration because of the Antiquity era pacing. Modern is a slog.

2. I like that obsolete buildings count, because this encourages overbuilding. That Altar which was vital in Antiquity but is now mostly useless? Get rid of it, slap a warehouse on top or something else. And if you are not really profiting from a building this age? Maybe refrain from building it. This (somewhat) limits city sprawl when you are playing well. And I think here could be a solution to at least some of the issues: Give more production bonuses to overbuilding. These could cancel out the obsolete building penalty to some degree and give obsolete buildings a purpose as a foundation for the buildings you want.

"I like that obsolete buildings count, because this encourages overbuilding" is how I felt about the game before 1.2.5, and so I find the current extra incentive excessive. We are effectively at the point where all the strategy is taken out of it. Overbuilding already meant you will be getting good adjacencies, re-activating specialist yields from those adjacencies, and getting production bonus from the policy card. It was almost always a bad idea to not overbuild if you planned your city correctly. The way I see it, that scaling penalty is not rewarding overbuilding, it's punishing building in the first place - if you had 12 buildings, 7 of which are obsolete, the penalty is +60% cost. After you overbuild one, the penalty remains at +60%, unless you've burnt a good specialist spot on a warehouse building. There are only two ways of lowering that penalty that I know of - either cheekily placing & canceling the new building in several spots to clear out one obsolete building from each districts, which feels like cheating, or going back in time and never building in the first place.

3. Yeah, that worked a little too well. They wanted us to prioritize, so we prioritize: Warehouses, production, culture, science, nothing else. I don't think the uniformity of cities is too much of a problem, because the map does influence my decisions. If I only have options for a +1 Amphitheater, I might not build it, even if I have the spare production. What I do think is a problem is that food buildings are essentially noob traps, happiness buildings are at best circumstantial and gold buildings are not much better. Something needs to happen to those, because right now the game would be better without some of those buildings. What I also don't like is the warehouse spam. Usually at the end of exploration, I spend all the spare cash on buying every possible warehouse building on the map, because these are just too beneficial and a warehouse is never a bad thing (in contrast to other buildings, exceptions only apply to very cramped cities where you need to leave space for something essential).

Agreed, I heavily dislike that "all warehouses in all towns" is always the best play for the end of exploration, getting them all bought feels more like whack-a-mole than a strategy game.

4. I think running a science or culture project instead of building something is not a bad thing, because it means you need to make a decision instead of just building everything available. I also don't buy too many buildings in cities in Modern as I need most of my cash elsewhere. I often buy railroads, ports and factories in towns, because they are much cheaper there anyway (especially when they are factory towns). The cities just try producing them. Exceptions do apply, when a rail station is a critical link for example.

5. I don't think this is too much of a problem, but then I do like wonder spamming. The wonders I want go where they will be built quickly, anyway. It is just those wonders which are optional which get placed mainly because of their adjacency. And managing to get that +5 production/science spot is really satisfying.

I think we're saying the same thing on both of those

But I also have some other issues:

6. It devalues unique buildings. The penalty applies to them and they apply the penalty to other buildings and you cannot even get rid of them. An Antiquity UB is balanced for Antiquity, so by Modern their yields are not really what you want for something that gets you a 5% production penalty. If the UQ effect is good, that is fine, but for less helpful UQ effects it can be a bad idea to build them in the long run. You would rather have a civ with a unique improvement which you can spam without worry. And unique buildings in Modern are rarely worth their cost.

Yep, that's a great point.

7. Communication of the effect is bad. I think the converting to city popup warns you about the increased cost, but I don't know whether the 5% penalty for buildings is communicated anywhere. It is certainly not obvious. How is someone who is not actively following the game supposed to know that it is often a bad idea to build that garden?

This is part of the wider and continuing issue with the UI. A lot of information is either hidden, or obscured so badly it may as well be hidden. "Production penalty" should be a big honking button in the city screen somewhere, breaking it down exactly - but so should be all the other yields. I no longer bother with checking my yields screen, since so much of it gets listed under "other sources".

8. On the topic of noobs: I think this change has really crippled the AI. From like mid-Exploration, the yields of the AI tend to stagnate, because the AI does not know how to handle this and builds huge messes of cities sprawling with all the buildings (including all the obsolete buildings). Conquer a city from the AI on Modern and weep at the libraries and gardens which still occupy space. With this, the AI incurs massive production penalties, cancelling out any production bonuses it has and rendering itself unable to do anything.

I always found that AI falls off really badly in exploration, regardless of their performance in antiquity. I'm not sure what rewards apply to them of the ones that apply to us, but I get such a massive boost from the narrative events & legacy points from antiquity, combined with the mementos, that the start of my exploration gets supercharged in a way theirs doesn't. That means they basically don't befriend any city-states, and so don't get the yield bonuses from them, their influence generation disappears, and they barely do any settling, and so they just play their small, limp empires. It may have gotten worse, but it was never great.

 

[Disgustipated]

As someone who just recently came back to the game, this is all news to me. I'm in agreement that this isn't explained in game, so for anyone not following patch notes, they may not know this. This explains some of my production issues in modern. Good tips here, thanks guys. Might I ask, what is the current meta for towns now? I'm reading you guys putting warehouse buildings in those, are you guys mostly running farming towns?

 

[stealth_nsk]

I feel my point here was along the lines of exactly what you are describing - the extra penalty cost from having more cities isn't that noticable, because it gets mushed together with the penalty for buildings within the city, so - 2 cities or 4 - you build broadly the same stuff. Comes down to what you define as "everything I need". I tend to always get my production and science buildings in, the monument, market & maybe lighthouse most of the time.

It's actually noticeable, it's like +1 building to each city for each city you have.

I think I wasn't exactly correct in my previous post. Maya are an exception, because, on one hand, you want to get cities early as them, but on the other hand, their unique quarter bonus compensates the issue with number of cities, so they are just different. For all other antiquity civs, I usually delay getting more cities.

The only antiquity building I'd hold on to is a monument if I don't bother getting both culture buildings in exploration. Otherwise, I always overbuild. My problem specifically is that the penalty from obsolete buildings applies in full even while overbuilding, so you aren't really encouraged to overbuild so much as permanently punished for having built it in the first place (or for AI building it if you convert a conquered settlement into a city). I know how to avoid it, but that means the play is never building about one third of the buildings. I think it makes the game shallower. The answer to "do I want to build an inn to speed up my early growth" is always no, unless you fancy slapping what's effectively a permanent production nerf for the whole rest of the game (since it stays there through all of exploration, and modern ends before you replace everything).

I prefer villa, not monument, as it gives more influence, and I overbuild even villas in the second half of exploration. And I don't think those permanent penalties are a problem, because they come with permanent bonuses as well.

This is the key thing for me. What forces you to change the build order between cities? Cause for me, it's warehouse=production > science=culture > gold, and food & happiness are basically no value. Adjacencies never really influence it, as I'd never convert a settlement into a city if it didn't have two decent resource adjacencies, a semi-decent culture spot, and a room for some yield boosts from wonders. Also, question specifically on gold buildings. Before factories in modern, do you always have more high value resources than available slots? I find antiquity can be 50/50, largely dependant on the number of camels I can improve or trade for, and in exploration I always have more room than resources to slot in, especially if I manage to grab Tomb of Askia & Grand Bazaar (which I almost always go for, as they are strictly better than gold buildings).

First of all, you don't unlock all building immediately. So, for example, you start exploration with only economic building available. If you manage to gather some merchants in antiquity, you'll start with decent number of resources and those extra slots will come really handy. Or in modern, I usually start with academics for Oxford and natural history for explorers, so I get museums and schoolhouses at the same time and distribute them between cities. Often a city which built one of them, doesn't build the other one for a long time.

I also disagree with your priorities:

1. Warehouse buildings are often unnecessary, because cities with many wonders don't have a lot of free tiles. In my last game, my main city ended up with zero land non-mountain rural tiles.
2. Production buildings output need to be valued against their cost in production AND their effect on building cost. They usually pay for themselves only with good adjacency and specialists filled in. They also often available late in era and they are pretty useless in the next era, because they will not have production adjacency and thus specialists will not give production too. Except for those who also give influence, of course, those are awesome.
3. Gold buildings are great. It's often easy to find good adjacencies for them (i.e. on peninsulas) and bonus resources are really useful.
4. I think you didn't write about influence buildings, they are on top too.
5. I agree about both food and happiness buildings, though.

Not a loaded question - when do you find it useful? In the early parts of the era? Before working on future techs & civics?

Early in modern, when no useful buildings are available, if I bring enough units from exploration. Later in modern too. Sometimes later in other ages, if I don't need any units, but it's rare, since I play with continuity option.

To clarify, my point was "why is the wonder production cost not affected"? At minimum, by the number of cities you have. It exarcebates the issue of all your production going into more production, science & culture. I don't massively care to build a wonder that will give some happiness adjacency on a building, since that's not where the specialists will be going. So in a way, sure, my cities are specialised. But they're all specialised in the exact same thing.

Wonders are a delicate thing. First, there's a wonder race, so it's not just about balance within your civilization. Second, with number of wonders available it would clearly shift the balance to wrong direction.

 

[uppi]

"I like that obsolete buildings count, because this encourages overbuilding" is how I felt about the game before 1.2.5, and so I find the current extra incentive excessive. We are effectively at the point where all the strategy is taken out of it. Overbuilding already meant you will be getting good adjacencies, re-activating specialist yields from those adjacencies, and getting production bonus from the policy card. It was almost always a bad idea to not overbuild if you planned your city correctly. The way I see it, that scaling penalty is not rewarding overbuilding, it's punishing building in the first place - if you had 12 buildings, 7 of which are obsolete, the penalty is +60% cost. After you overbuild one, the penalty remains at +60%, unless you've burnt a good specialist spot on a warehouse building. There are only two ways of lowering that penalty that I know of - either cheekily placing & canceling the new building in several spots to clear out one obsolete building from each districts, which feels like cheating, or going back in time and never building in the first place.

Yes, you always wanted to overbuild the really good spots with specialists on them. But in the all-the-buildings meta, some buildings would invariably end up in suboptimal spots without significant adjacencies. For those it would often make sense to leave them be, especially if they had production or influence yields. Now that buildings keep their base yields on age transition (not sure which patch that was), overbuilding a +1 Armorer or Guild Hall would not make too much sense without the penalty.

I always found that AI falls off really badly in exploration, regardless of their performance in antiquity. I'm not sure what rewards apply to them of the ones that apply to us, but I get such a massive boost from the narrative events & legacy points from antiquity, combined with the mementos, that the start of my exploration gets supercharged in a way theirs doesn't. That means they basically don't befriend any city-states, and so don't get the yield bonuses from them, their influence generation disappears, and they barely do any settling, and so they just play their small, limp empires. It may have gotten worse, but it was never great.

Yes, the AI has more issues that this, but before 1.2.5, you sometimes had AIs which had more yields than you at the start of Modern. Now that does not really seem to happen anymore and I think this change is at least one of the culprits. I checked my last game where I conquered Amina's Waset in the last turns of Modern. Not counting warehouse or unique buildings, it still had 6 Antiquity buildings (including a Garden, a Bath and an Altar) and 8 Exploration buildings (including an Inn). And only two Modern buildings and one of those was a City Park. This is in no way competitive, even with all the massive AI bonuses.

As someone who just recently came back to the game, this is all news to me. I'm in agreement that this isn't explained in game, so for anyone not following patch notes, they may not know this. This explains some of my production issues in modern. Good tips here, thanks guys. Might I ask, what is the current meta for towns now? I'm reading you guys putting warehouse buildings in those, are you guys mostly running farming towns?

I am running a mix of farming, mining and factory towns. But the specialization does not matter too much. What matters is that you arrange the warehouses in quarters and then stack as many +x on warehouses/quarters bonuses as you can find.

 

[UWHabs]

I think things are better than they were before, but agreed with a lot of the above that more balance is needed.

I do like the point about UB being de-valued. Some of them have some strong bonuses as a quarter (Assyria +2 production per great work is a massive exploration era bonus, obviously the Mayan production bonus too), so even if the base yields aren't spectacular, they still have some value. Some of the others (like Egypt) can have some serious adjacency, so specialists are great on them too. But others like the Maurya the base yields are just kind of ok, quickly out-paced. Maybe UB should by default have their base yield scaled by era? If my 2 Mauryan buildings gave +6 science combined in antiquity, +12 in exploration, and +18 in modern, same as a normal T1 building, they'd be strong. Although UI have some of the same problems too, even a Hawilt triangle is worth overbuilding with exploration buildings if you have other good spots.

But as to the overall, I do think it's kind of annoying that I can complete a whole wonder in like 5 turns, but it takes me 11 turns to build a Military Academy. But where is the balance? The olden times when you would build everything because it all came so cheap was bad for its own ways, but the new ways add its own challenges.

I think in the end, a lot of it comes down to the game just not quite being there in balancing yields between eras. There's still a mix where, for example, most resource yields tend to follow a 2:3:4 model (ie. Cotton is +2/+2 in antiquity, +3/+3 in exploration, and then modern ivory for example is +4/+4), but building base yields tend to be more 1:2:3 (ie +3 base yield in antiquity, +6 in exploration, and +9 in modern). But then building maintenance also follows the 2:3:4 model iirc. And then you just get some buildings that have the base yield, but then they give a bonus - like a Dungeon is ostensibly a T1 production building which makes sense to be +6 production, but then it tags in +4 influence as a massive extra bonus. It should probably be more like +4/+4, or maybe only +6/+2 if you want to keep it more about production and have that influence as more of a side bonus.

I do think more buildings could have bonuses for quarters too. Maybe even just each building getting like a +1 or +2 per era bonus for being in a quarter, that would give even more reason to overbuild and quarter yourself off rather than sprawl.

 

[Lebo44]

This might be a stupid idea, feel free to criticize, but I have a feeling that many things could be balanced by introducing a more comprehensive Victory Score, which has been suggested several times.

Many people play toward a specific victory type, but a well‑designed Score Victory would offer greater flexibility, a more sandbox‑like feel, and could also neutralize certain gaps mentioned in this thread. For example, a Unique Building for a particular civ might not provide many bonuses or just be OK-ish, but simply constructing it could grant additional point towards Score Victory, so it might still be worthwhile. Similarly, many buildings that appear later in the Age (like the Academy) and are often considered not worth building could become strategically useful for boosting your Score.
Not sure how AI could handle that but it just a loose idea, food for thought

 

[kotpeter]

Let's say there wasn't cost scaling per building in the city or per city in the empire. Instead, the following cost scaling for buildings would take place:

• No cost increase on the city/town center, or in the 1st radius
• +50% cost in the 2nd radius, or +25% if there's already a building on the tile
• +100% cost in the 3rd radius, or +50% if there's already a building on the tile
• +5% base cost per building type in the empire (e.g. the more labs you build, the more expensive they become) - this part does not apply to warehouse buildings and unique buildings

I'm suggesting these changes, because they:

1. Add more skill ceiling to choosing what/where/when to build
2. Naturally discourage city sprawl
3. Add more factors for choosing optimal settlement location
4. Seem easier to explain and reason about than the current system
5. Seem easier to communicate via UI

 

[uppi]

I do like the point about UB being de-valued. Some of them have some strong bonuses as a quarter (Assyria +2 production per great work is a massive exploration era bonus, obviously the Mayan production bonus too), so even if the base yields aren't spectacular, they still have some value. Some of the others (like Egypt) can have some serious adjacency, so specialists are great on them too. But others like the Maurya the base yields are just kind of ok, quickly out-paced. Maybe UB should by default have their base yield scaled by era? If my 2 Mauryan buildings gave +6 science combined in antiquity, +12 in exploration, and +18 in modern, same as a normal T1 building, they'd be strong. Although UI have some of the same problems too, even a Hawilt triangle is worth overbuilding with exploration buildings if you have other good spots.

I think scaling their yields would make them too strong, because you would get the upgrade for free, while other civs would need to spend quite a few turns of production to get to the same level. If we keep the same system, I would just exempt them from the production penalties and it would be fine. So, instead of just warehouses it would be all ageless buildings, which is a simple rule and makes sense, because you cannot get rid of them.

Let's say there wasn't cost scaling per building in the city or per city in the empire. Instead, the following cost scaling for buildings would take place:

• No cost increase on the city/town center, or in the 1st radius
• +50% cost in the 2nd radius, or +25% if there's already a building on the tile
• +100% cost in the 3rd radius, or +50% if there's already a building on the tile

I like this.

• +5% base cost per building type in the empire (e.g. the more labs you build, the more expensive they become) - this part does not apply to warehouse buildings and unique buildings

I disagree with this, however. First, I think there needs to be a penalty for making more cities, because otherwise making more cities will be just straight up beneficial (especially when it open up new 1st-radius slots). Second, I think that if you want to build more universities than pavilions, you should not be penalized for that. Otherwise you end up in a meta, where you always build 4 universities and 4 pavilions, because the 5th is too expensive and the games get very similar.

 

[King Flevance]

The game already differentiates between buildings towns can build (tier 0) and tier 1 and tier 2 buildings. So you could easily have the 5% be based on the numbers of tier 1 and tier 2 buildings. You could even do it so that tier 1 buildings ignore how many tier 2 buildings there are but tier 2 buildings get added production based on both tier 1 and 2.

 

[kotpeter]

I think there needs to be a penalty for making more cities, because otherwise making more cities will be just straight up beneficial

I agree with you, but I think the solution to this problem lies somewhere else. I'd rather see more things to do with towns (e.g. more town-specific synergies or better town specializations) to make them worth considering instead of cities in multiple occasions.

In other words, I'd rather see buffs/reworks to towns than nerfs to cities.

 

[pjotroos]

It's actually noticeable, it's like +1 building to each city for each city you have.

I think I wasn't exactly correct in my previous post. Maya are an exception, because, on one hand, you want to get cities early as them, but on the other hand, their unique quarter bonus compensates the issue with number of cities, so they are just different. For all other antiquity civs, I usually delay getting more cities.

My counter-example is Carthage. You only get one city as them, and post 1.2.5 they feel dreadful to play. Everything still grinds down in a similar fashion to all the other civs. I don't really get the sense of freedom from that extra-city penalty missing.

First of all, you don't unlock all building immediately. So, for example, you start exploration with only economic building available. If you manage to gather some merchants in antiquity, you'll start with decent number of resources and those extra slots will come really handy. Or in modern, I usually start with academics for Oxford and natural history for explorers, so I get museums and schoolhouses at the same time and distribute them between cities. Often a city which built one of them, doesn't build the other one for a long time.

Oh, yeah, I play all my games with regroup on, instead of continuity, because I found continuity just made me do ridiculous amount of meta-gaming. That definitely changes the equation, since my early production in the era will go towards civilian units and navy. And we definitely play modern differently - I'll only build museums if I'm going for cultural victory, in which case I don't bother with schoolhouses much, because I won't need that science. For any other victory type, I find science strictly better - military victory is somewhat culture-reliant, but it only needs four civics plus one turn, whereas more science gets you to better units faster.

I prefer villa, not monument, as it gives more influence, and I overbuild even villas in the second half of exploration. And I don't think those permanent penalties are a problem, because they come with permanent bonuses as well.
I also disagree with your priorities:

1. Warehouse buildings are often unnecessary, because cities with many wonders don't have a lot of free tiles. In my last game, my main city ended up with zero land non-mountain rural tiles.
2. Production buildings output need to be valued against their cost in production AND their effect on building cost. They usually pay for themselves only with good adjacency and specialists filled in. They also often available late in era and they are pretty useless in the next era, because they will not have production adjacency and thus specialists will not give production too. Except for those who also give influence, of course, those are awesome.
3. Gold buildings are great. It's often easy to find good adjacencies for them (i.e. on peninsulas) and bonus resources are really useful.
4. I think you didn't write about influence buildings, they are on top too.
5. I agree about both food and happiness buildings, though.
   
   Early in modern, when no useful buildings are available, if I bring enough units from exploration. Later in modern too. Sometimes later in other ages, if I don't need any units, but it's rare, since I play with continuity option.
   
   Wonders are a delicate thing. First, there's a wonder race, so it's not just about balance within your civilization. Second, with number of wonders available it would clearly shift the balance to wrong direction.

No real comment here, other than it's interesting to get a very different perspective. Some of it might be how differently game plays between continuity and regroup, some of it might be to do with how much army and money we like to have. I often will identify a coastal tile for good gold adjacencies, but often just won't properly utilise it (so at the end of the game it will still be Market and Guild Hall) not because the adjacencies are bad, but because I'm swimming in gold anyway. I also love warehouse buildings, because they retain their effect through the game, get added benefits from exploration tree and city states, don't damage your production, and boost the tiles in the early game, when marginal gains matter most. Even if there aren't many tiles left to boost for them by late exploration, it no longer matters, cause the game's already won.

 

[pjotroos]

Let's say there wasn't cost scaling per building in the city or per city in the empire. Instead, the following cost scaling for buildings would take place:

• No cost increase on the city/town center, or in the 1st radius
• +50% cost in the 2nd radius, or +25% if there's already a building on the tile
• +100% cost in the 3rd radius, or +50% if there's already a building on the tile
• +5% base cost per building type in the empire (e.g. the more labs you build, the more expensive they become) - this part does not apply to warehouse buildings and unique building

That's a neat idea. It touches on another issue that I have, which is how consistent the city sprawl is across the ages - wonders aside, your cities grow large in antiquity and remain about as large through modern. So if the production penalty was also getting progressively weaker through the ages, you'd be pushed towards more condensed settlements in antiquity, with the city sprawl becoming easier over time.

Just riffing on what you wrote, if the number of buildings stays the same, I'd love to see a variable size of the buildings purely to help the game on both a visual and a strategic level; if antiquity and tier 1 exploration buildings only required 1/4th of the tile, and t2 exploration and modern took up half, like they do now (and then rail station and such remained a full tile), that would make the cities grow across the map over time, and offer more interesting trade offs with the overbuilding.

 

[EpicWestern]

I absolutely hate the production changes for several reasons:

- It introduces a new convoluted system to a game in which various bugs, poor UI, and poor documentation still exist despite being almost a year from release. No one was remotely asking for this, why on Earth is it a priority?

- It doesn't reflect how things work in real life. Whether Portland exists as a city or not should not affect how much buildings cost in Pittsburgh. Building a laboratory in Pittsburgh should not make a factory cost more in Pittsburgh.

- It indirectly incentivizes warfare. As the cost of buildings go up strategically minded players will lean toward units instead and will try to take a city instead of building one. There are hundreds of warfare based strategy games part of what makes the civ franchise stand out is the peaceful victory options.

- Civ7 had a pretty severe obsolete buildings problem already. Arenas, lighthouses, blacksmiths, banks, tenements, canneries, basically any late tech tree building from any age got significantly nerfed despite badly needing a buff.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I absolutely hate the production changes for several reasons:

- It introduces a new convoluted system to a game in which various bugs, poor UI, and poor documentation still exist despite being almost a year from release. No one was remotely asking for this, why on Earth is it a priority?

That's a very strange argument. All games have bugs a year after release, or 10 years after release; most of them have some issues with UI. This shouldn't prevent developers on improving gameplay.

- It doesn't reflect how things work in real life. Whether Portland exists as a city or not should not affect how much buildings cost in Pittsburgh. Building a laboratory in Pittsburgh should not make a factory cost more in Pittsburgh.

There were a lot of posts, why this argument doesn't work for civilization. First, it's strategic game, not simulator, so gameplay should be important. Second, on this level of abstraction, any gameplay mechanics could be interpreted as having (or not having) real-world analogue.

- It indirectly incentivizes warfare. As the cost of buildings go up strategically minded players will lean toward units instead and will try to take a city instead of building one. There are hundreds of warfare based strategy games part of what makes the civ franchise stand out is the peaceful victory options.

This argument could be flipped the other way around - with buildings requiring longer to build, you'll have less units and thus will not go to war. In reality this change doesn't force warfare any more or less. You still need to balance buildings and units.

- Civ7 had a pretty severe obsolete buildings problem already. Arenas, lighthouses, blacksmiths, banks, tenements, canneries, basically any late tech tree building from any age got significantly nerfed despite badly needing a buff.

There are some balance problems here, but they have nothing to do with this change. Moreover, this problem was already partially addressed with improved base yields. Blacksmiths are surely a bit too late, but banks totally have their use.

 

[EpicWestern]

That's a very strange argument. All games have bugs a year after release, or 10 years after release; most of them have some issues with UI. This shouldn't prevent developers on improving gameplay.


There were a lot of posts, why this argument doesn't work for civilization. First, it's strategic game, not simulator, so gameplay should be important. Second, on this level of abstraction, any gameplay mechanics could be interpreted as having (or not having) real-world analogue.


This argument could be flipped the other way around - with buildings requiring longer to build, you'll have less units and thus will not go to war. In reality this change doesn't force warfare any more or less. You still need to balance buildings and units.


There are some balance problems here, but they have nothing to do with this change. Moreover, this problem was already partially addressed with improved base yields. Blacksmiths are surely a bit too late, but banks totally have their use.

"All games have bugs a year after release" is just objectively false, and even if were to grant that its somewhat true, the bugs in Civ7 are bad enough that there should be an all hands on deck approach to fix them. Focus firing with a commander is something I'm doing just about every game and it frustratingly fails at some point just about every game. Much of the time it can make the difference as to whether I capture a city or not.

Yeah of course games don't need to exactly mirror real life but civ7 is needlessly breaking immersion in many spots. This issue has come up in a lot of threads and people fail to understand that it's more of an art issue than a logical problem. If I say "this painting has to too much blue" you're not understanding the criticism if you point out that blue is a valid pigment and that many other artists use blue.

And obviously making buildings more expensive in the latest patch affects those buildings???

 

[Manpanzee]

I quite like the core concept of the building economy changes, but there’s a lot that could use tweaking. Concurring/adding on to a lot of points others have raised:

--I like suggestions around systems that have building costs scaling based on how many of that specific building exists in your empire. This is a pretty straightforward way to encourage city specialization, and Civ VI already implemented some similar stuff with district cost scaling/discounts.

--UBs are generally too expensive now, especially after the Antiquity era. These should be cheap enough to be a consistent benefit of playing a civ, rather than something that’s often just taking up space in the kit.

--Exploration-era wonder costs should definitely be increased across the board. The costs to make a freakin’ WONDER compared to the costs to make a single normal building are just plain silly.

--Some of the issues people raise about late-era buildings being pointless are at least as much about Continuity mode as they are about economy changes. I am not sure that economy changes alone could ever produce a satisfying resolution to this issue as long as people are treating Continuity as the default game mode.

--The town/warehouse spam meta is a big issue and probably needs to be broken up before we can really evaluate how well building cost scaling works as a concept.

While others in this thread have called out the role that warehouse/quarter buffs play in this meta, I think that there is also a large and understated role played by empire resources. Some empire resources are far too strong – this applies to many of the Exploration treasure resources, with Spices being the biggest offender. Others have reasonable effects in a vacuum but are far too common – this is the case currently with Gold and Silver, which remain too easy to stack in large numbers despite getting nerfed.

The net effect of all this empire yield inflation is to reduce building yields as a share of your overall output, which makes building decisions matter less. Like, OK, the raw yields difference between making an Observatory and making a Kiln may be larger than it was pre-1.2.5. But it doesn’t really matter either way if the yields from your city buildings are being drowned out by non-building sources.