How should maritimes be nerfed?

[aimlessgun]

Not everyone plays the same, not everyone uses "optimal" strategies (ICS). I hate ICS, instead I love to build small empires with large cities. And it takes FAR too long to grow them without the current maritime CS (and yes, I build granaries and watermills wherever possible). I'm not using the trading post spam, I farm a lot of tiles, but even so and with a few maritime states I rarely manage to get large cities in a timely manner.

There are several problems here really, city growth past size 10, tile yield, AI still ignoring CS, also how late hospitals/medical labs become available. All of these should be changed before working on the maritime CS. Or at least, along with them.

Also, I wonder, if people think something is overpowered, why do they still use it? If you think maritimes are OP, don't use them (or don't use multiple of them). If you think horsemen are OP, don't use them. Why ask for a nerf if other people might enjoy those aspects? You even have the ability to mod these things to your taste. But don't ask for the main game to be changed. This is my opinion at least.

Well you hit on a good point: it is not mutually exclusive to have a balanced game and to satisfy people who do not try to play in the most optimal way possible. City growth past size 10 definitely merits a look, and some of the ideas for a 3rd growth building, available early, seem pretty solid (like Early building 25% storage, hospital 25%, med lab 25%)

I am a big fan of self-imposed limitations. I haven't built a single horseman, or done ICS. I've played no-TP games, no-war games. It keeps the game interesting on deity. But in the end you want to be able to play a game where you can go all out and and still be challenged. Self-imposed limits are somehow more hollow.

 

[khrag]

A simple fix would be to make it so you can only ally 1 Maritime CS. Make it so all MCS hate each other and as soon as you make friends with one the others all get angry with you, and when you ally, the rest all go to permanent war.

 

[LDiCesare]

Also, I wonder, if people think something is overpowered, why do they still use it?

Did you try playing without city states? I don't like them. I think they are gamey, abusable, break immersion.
However, if you remove them, many things fall apart:
You can't accumulate culture and food as fast, makign a cultural victory difficult. Many social policies fall apart (the whole patronage tree plus the 33% decay for other civs in Order), several nations get their unique ability destroyed (Siam, Greece, Mongolia).
In addition, I suspect the resources placement in the random maps not to cope well with the absence of city states when it places luxuries.

The result is that not using city states ends up with a worse game than using them. It's then possible to use house rules like 'no more than 1 maritime CS ally' or the like, but it feels very artificial.
I'd rather get rid of city states or give them meaningful diplomacy (interact with them in some way other than throwing money at them). Getting rid of them would require increased culture and food. Food yields from specials (wheat...) could be put to +2 or 3 for instance. Culture buildings (wonders in particular) and specialists (I mean, great artists are so bad, the specialist only gives ONE cultureà could be increased too in order to compensate for the lack of cultural city states.
Overall, the game would require a lot of changes to make up for the lack of city states because the game hasn't been balanced at all without them.

 

[Aldor]

I have played without them (even won my fastest cultural victory so far on a map without any CS). Game still works, but you need a good position (rivers etc) and mostly farmed tiles to still grow reasonably.

One thing I can agree with is that it is too easy to ally with CS. Especially once your empire takes off and you have lots of cash available. Perhaps a good solution would not be to nerf CS, but instead make it much harder to gain alliances with them. Buy your way to friendship, but only quests can get you an alliance.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I have played without them (even won my fastest cultural victory so far on a map without any CS). Game still works, but you need a good position (rivers etc) and mostly farmed tiles to still grow reasonably.

One thing I can agree with is that it is too easy to ally with CS. Especially once your empire takes off and you have lots of cash available. Perhaps a good solution would not be to nerf CS, but instead make it much harder to gain alliances with them. Buy your way to friendship, but only quests can get you an alliance.

But there's still the matter of the Maritimes being way better than the other two.

 

[MkLh]

Perhaps a good solution would not be to nerf CS, but instead make it much harder to gain alliances with them. Buy your way to friendship, but only quests can get you an alliance.

The problem is that quests are so random. They appear in a random moment in time, and some of them are ridiculously easy, like destroying a barb encampment, some nearly impossible, like gifting an engineer. Making alliances dependent on quests would bring a strong random factor in a game, which I personally don't like.

 

[Paradigne]

I agree with the minority that they should not be changed. It may not be realistic, but city growth is so ridiculous at higher populations that 2 food (or 20 if you get up to 10) is NOT making my cities extraordinarily large.
strategic resources with low food amounts,

Am I the only one who has seen AI claim CS? Or go to war because I stole there CS? The only thing I haven't seen yet is the AI go for UN win with CS.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I agree with the minority that they should not be changed. It may not be realistic, but city growth is so ridiculous at higher populations that 2 food (or 20 if you get up to 10) is NOT making my cities extraordinarily large.
strategic resources with low food amounts,

Am I the only one who has seen AI claim CS? Or go to war because I stole there CS? The only thing I haven't seen yet is the AI go for UN win with CS.

Well, that's a problem with how the growth rate works (a worse problem for my playstyle). It doesn't mean that the CSes aren't unbalanced, though. If you do the massive city spam strategy, it's ridiculous. Also, it minimizes the need for farms, allowing you to put trading posts everywhere, breaking money.

 

[aimlessgun]

I agree with the minority that they should not be changed. It may not be realistic, but city growth is so ridiculous at higher populations that 2 food (or 20 if you get up to 10) is NOT making my cities extraordinarily large.
strategic resources with low food amounts,

It's not about making your cities huge. It's about making tons of smaller cities medium sized while they work nothing but tradeposts, mines, and specialists.

The clear solution is to nerf Maritimes but reduce the insane food needed for the larger city sizes.

 

[UWHabs]

Maybe have them only able to gift you as much food as the city makes (or 1/2 that or whatever). So if your maritime city state gets 30 food a turn, then it would gift in the same ratios as now, but only up to a max of 30 food. This would scale with era, in that the maritime CS would continue growing larger in later eras. That would sort of be in line with the "you get 33% of the research of allied CS".

If you also cap it at the current values (so that a small empire can't get like +12 food per city per maritime CS), that seems like that would be reasonable.

 

[Paradigne]

Easiest solution would be to have a setting to keep people from putting cities within X hexes of each other.

I mean, this HAS to be a multiplayer argument doesn't it? If it's just an ICS complaint, then it's simple: Don't do it. I mean why argue a point that it is unrealistic when you are not playing the game realistically in the first place

 

[Celevin]

The Maritimes should grant each city food equal to 20% of its population. Now it auto-scales as the game goes, so no need for era switches, thus making slingshots weaker as well.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Am I the only one who thinks instead of nerfing them we should bring up the others to their level?
I'd like to see military perhaps give bonuses to exp of every unit you make, maybe a standard bonus built into them? Culture could perhaps also allow you to choose a bonus policy from a tree designed just for them that you keep so long as you are the ally?

I would rather see city states be more important than less, considering they are the only real major improvement I see in this game over IV.

This is what I believe as well, as long as it is coupled with increased competition from the AI for the city states. Here's how I would buff the other city states.

Cultural City State - Provides same culture for the capital as they currently do, but also provides culture to other cities - maybe half culture to the three largest cities besides the capital, or more cities on larger maps. This would make them extremely valuable earlier in the game for popping the borders of your cities.

Military City State - should gift the units directly to your empire, like you can gift units to city states on the other side of the world. These units would be a lot more useful if I didn't have to bring them from the other side of the world myself. At ally level you should be able to ask the city states to build a specific unit type from the diplomacy screen.

This should be coupled with city states being a very high priority for the AI. The least city-state oriented civs should be about as active with them as Elizabeth and the other city-state oriented civs are now. Alexander, Elizabeth, the Siamese leader - they should be spending almost all their money on city states. The player should be put in a position of having to have a strong economy and devote most of their gold to maintaining relations to keep control over a couple of city states when these other civs are in the game.

One advantage of this would be making the city state requests much more important. Nobody wants to build a road to a city state when you can spend 250 gold to get the same effect, likewise with requests to go to war for them or to take out a competing city state. If it was damn hard to compete with the AI for city states with gold, these would be great opportunities. If Monaco is Elizabeth's ally, and wants me to take out Hanoi, which is also Elizabeth's ally, that would be worth doing. In the game as it is, you can just outspend Elizabeth and get both Monaco and Hanoi as your ally for a few turns gold.

 

[Paradigne]

Military City State - should gift the units directly to your empire, like you can gift units to city states on the other side of the world. These units would be a lot more useful if I didn't have to bring them from the other side of the world myself. At ally level you should be able to ask the city states to build a specific unit type from the diplomacy screen.

IMO I don't like this, unless it is an option. I will frequently get a MSC near an potential enemy and just build my force there.

 

[SuperJay]

Sounds pretty realistic to me.

The settlement at Jamestown in the 1600s entirely relied on food supplies from England until John Smith came along.

Right, and that was one colony receiving food supplies from another nation. In Civ 5 we have the reverse: one city supplying massive amounts of food to an entire nation. I don't personally think realism is a huge factor, but in gameplay terms, this is pretty unbalanced - and not just because it makes ICS easier.

 

[Uniform Sierra]

I wish I could find a guide, other than the civipedia, that would explain every aspect of this game to me The guides I have found aren't quite what I'm looking for.

What would happen if I constructed a road between me and a city-state I'm friends with or allied to?

 

[SuperJay]

I wish I could find a guide, other than the civipedia, that would explain every aspect of this game to me The guides I have found aren't quite what I'm looking for.

What would happen if I constructed a road between me and a city-state I'm friends with or allied to?

You'd pay more maintenance for more roads, basically. Unless they specifically request it of you, building trade routes to city-states doesn't have any beneficial effect at all, unfortunately.

And yeah, the Civilopedia is in pretty sad shape this time around. Btw, Firaxis? I'm a professional tech writer with 13 years of experience in the software industry, and 18 years of experience as a Civ player. I'm available and would be happy to help!

 

[MkLh]

Alexander, Elizabeth, the Siamese leader - they should be spending almost all their money on city states. The player should be put in a position of having to have a strong economy and devote most of their gold to maintaining relations to keep control over a couple of city states when these other civs are in the game.

This would make CSs unusable for human player in Immortal+.

One advantage of this would be making the city state requests much more important.

But should they be more important? Are they some kind of deep and interesting aspect of the game? In my opinion no. They just add needless randomness. The game should be based on your decisions, not luck.

 

[Lightzy]

the game is better without CSs.

 

[MkLh]

the game is better without CSs.

It's more balanced, but there are even less things to do.