How to increase production without producing a carpet of doom?

[learner gamer]

Hi all!

As I’ve mentioned in another thread, I’m currently playing my first post 1.0.1.275 patch game as Napoleon with Thal’s TBC mod v7.0 installed – and I’m still finding hammers a little scarce, both in absolute terms and relative to gold and research. (I readily admit however that assessing the latter is complicated by the fact that I’m playing my current game at chieftain – but I reached the same conclusion in my previous games at king and emperor.) This is despite employing some great advice on this forum re: growing cities to approx 4 pop and then working hammers. Although the situation improves a little in the post workshop era IMHO, I personally find that early game production remains particularly slow.

So, in short, I continue to believe (since I mentioned the same thing at launch), that hammer availability – especially in the early game – needs to be increased. My reasoning for this is simple: more hammers mean that more builds get completed, and completing more builds means the gamer is making more choices (about what to build next) each turn. The problem of course with increasing hammer availability in Civ 5 is the potential for the human and AI to invest those hammers in military units, leading to the so called carpet of doom.

So here’s where I’m hoping all you Civ 5 gurus can help. What I’m hoping to achieve with this thread is to discuss ways in which hammer availability can be increased in Thal's mod, without necessarily increasing the potential for military unit spam. I appreciate that this is a challenge – but I’m absolutely convinced that resolving this dilemma is one of the keys to unlocking the vast potential in Civ 5 (which is already playing better than on release IMHO, thanks in part to Thal’s mod.) With that in mind, all suggestions are very welcome...you never know where that next great idea is coming from.

 

[learner gamer]

Following on from the above, I’ve had a couple of ideas which I share to kick off things.

My first thought is one that I mentioned a long time ago: that a hammer should be added back to mines. This can be done either at game start (so a mine automatically adds two hammers to a hex – to compensate for losing the ability to grow), or perhaps the second hammer could be added at an early(ish) game tech such as engineering, which seems (at v 7.0 of Thal’s excellent TBC mod) a little underpowered relative to the alternative techs IMHO.

As something a little less extreme, perhaps the republic social policy could be tweaked to provide an extra hammer – even if at the expense of one of its food. After all, it strikes me that we have plenty of early food boosting infrastructure to build – we just lack the hammers to build them. If going this way, perhaps the challenge then becomes how to balance out the tradition tree, so as not to overpower large empires.

Perhaps this could achieved by granting hammers at oligarchy (which seems a little underpowered relative to the other tradition policies IMHO) – and perhaps oligarchy could be placed on the second or third tier of the social policy tree under aristocracy, so gamers can’t nab both republic under liberty and oligarchy under tradition. An interesting alternative IMHO is to grant a free great merchant at oligarchy – giving the smaller empire access to gold rather than hammers, to buy units, buildings and CS influence. In either case, the advantage of granting hammers under social policies (rather than via mines) of course is that they are granted irrespective of terrain – a huge benefit to civs spawning on flat land.

Of course, granting extra hammers opens up the possibility of mass military unit spam, with all its attendant map congestion. To that end, I’ve had two thoughts re: how to limit military build up in a world in which hammers are more readily available. The first is to make buildings pre-requisites to building resource-less military units, thus forcing the gamer to expend some of their increased hammer supply on unit spamming buildings.

An obvious example here IMHO is to perhaps make the barracks a pre-requisite to building (or upgrading to) gunpowder units in a city. In a similar vein, an armory could perhaps be made a pre-requisite to building (or upgrading) siege units in a city. The ability to build infantry (incl. mech infantry) and paratroopers could similarly depend on having a military academy. Lastly, an arsenal could perhaps be made a pre-requisite to building (or upgrading units to) anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, and mobile SAMs; you could even make the arsenal a pre-requisite for building the resource-less air units (although I’d prefer a new building such as an airport).

Once again, the idea behind this approach is to simply limit the number of resource-less military units on the map by imposing a building requirement instead – and thus limit the ability to spawn these units. If using this approach, the obvious complication I can see is provided by upgrading – is one pre-requisite building enough to upgrade all units of a particular type, or would the gamer only be allowed to upgrade as many units in a turn as they have pre-requisite buildings?

Talking of a resource requirement by the way, the alternative (or perhaps even complementary) approach that has occurred to me is to introduce a (currently absent) resource requirement for gunpowder units. Perhaps for example, a new metal – lead – could be added as a strategic resource, the idea being that it determines how much ammunition you’re capable of producing, and therefore how many gunpowder units you can field. I appreciate this may present a real challenge to game balance (ie. how to win militarily if you can’t produce currently resource-less gunpowder units and don’t have iron or horse), so perhaps a less stringent requirement is needed, such as linking resource-less units to a pre-requisite building, as mentioned earlier.

As I say, these are only initial thoughts – but I’m sure the good folk here on cfc can do much better. With that in mind, it’s over to you good reader – I look forward to reading your thoughts.

 

[Txurce]

Hammers are scarce in the early game. I don’t find it to be a problem, but can easily see how someone else would. (I can never have enough food, given early AI growth rates). In the case of your ongoing game, why not use your plentiful gold to rush buildings or units?

What you probably don’t want to do is to add early hammers that are only going to multiply in the later game, creating an imbalance in favor of production-focused civs. For this reason, adding hammers to mines may not be a good idea.

Hammers via appropriate SP’s make more sense to me. So does the idea of a GM to grant early gold (indirectly leading to hammers).

I’ve never played a game where there was undue map congestion – odd, huh? But I don’t think adding a unit building would significantly cut down on overall unit count. It certainly wouldn’t slow the warmongers who are more likely to max out units. In fact, it would most strongly affect the builder who wants to maintain a small, contemporary fighting force.

 

[Erilaz]

With a production focus, my solution is Great Engineers. You get one fairly quickly from culture in the Tradition tree within two policies. Use them to build manufacturies anywhere you'd normally build a mine, even on luxury resources since you'll still get the tile developed. After that, concentrate on wonders and buildings with engineer specialists and Great Person bonuses. By mid-game I usually have more than I really need around my capital and I'm sending them off to other cities.

With this strategy I have to agree with Txurce. More hammers anywhere else would just multiply later to ludicrous production levels for players and AI. It's a bit unbalanced as it is. On normal speed and difficulty, by mid-game I'm usually cranking out units in 1-3 turns and most buildings in 5-8 with production levels in my capital approaching 100. I have to play on harder difficulties, raging barbarians, and epic speed if I want a challenge. Otherwise the AI just gets steamrolled.

Even if you're not concentrating on production, that one free Engineer in Tradition can make a big difference in the early game, especially for coastal and food rich zones. That way you don't have to keep rolling new maps/games looking for particular resources or placement.

 

[Txurce]

With a production focus, my solution is Great Engineers. You get one fairly quickly from culture in the Tradition tree within two policies. Use them to build manufacturies anywhere you'd normally build a mine, even on luxury resources since you'll still get the tile developed. After that, concentrate on wonders and buildings with engineer specialists and Great Person bonuses. By mid-game I usually have more than I really need around my capital and I'm sending them off to other cities.

With this strategy I have to agree with Txurce. More hammers anywhere else would just multiply later to ludicrous production levels for players and AI. It's a bit unbalanced as it is. On normal speed and difficulty, by mid-game I'm usually cranking out units in 1-3 turns and most buildings in 5-8 with production levels in my capital approaching 100. I have to play on harder difficulties, raging barbarians, and epic speed if I want a challenge. Otherwise the AI just gets steamrolled.

Even if you're not concentrating on production, that one free Engineer in Tradition can make a big difference in the early game, especially for coastal and food rich zones. That way you don't have to keep rolling new maps/games looking for particular resources or placement.

I've never built a manufactory. How's that for getting locked into patterns? I will try some version of your strategy (watered down, probably!) to see what effect it has. It sounds very promising, entertaining, and of course different.

 

[Erilaz]

I've never built a manufactory. How's that for getting locked into patterns? I will try some version of your strategy (watered down, probably!) to see what effect it has. It sounds very promising, entertaining, and of course different.

Thanks. As for that food problem you mentioned, coastal cities with fish/whales are a bit unbalanced too. The way I get ludicrous production is to have a coastal capital with at least three fishies within three tiles and preferably some land food too. If you're researching the maritime line across the top of the tree, those fish get bonuses from the lighthouse, Colossus, seaport, and especially the Commerce policies. While the city is growing like mad, split your citizens between sea and land production tiles, and defend your work boats with a couple warships. Forget villages and cash crop luxuries unless you've dropped a manufactury on it. Depending on how quickly you're generating culture, the second-tier policy in Commerce that adds +4 gold to fish/whales/pearls will make all your cash problems go away for the rest of the game if you multiply it with market, bank, National Treasury, etc. After that, you don't really need any production in any other cities, you can just buy buildings.

On that note, I think there should be a limitation on the number of buildings you can buy in one city in one turn. With a production focus and going for a domination victory (and with stupid amounts of cash from coastal cities) I send settlers with armies to pop megafortress cities in war zones on the edges of enemy territories. Stagnate growth and buy up defense structures (wall, castle, etc.). Buy or move in the best ranged unit available. For added stupidity, build a Great General fortress in front of it to create a 3 point damage zone. In one turn you have friendly territory with all applicable bonuses, a ranged unit inside that won't take damage unless the city is taken, and on the next turn it fires at 2 hexes regardless of terrain with any bonuses like the Honor policy that gives a 100% bonus to city ranged with a garrison. Buy up training structures, and it can crank out veteran troops on the spot too. With the other Honor policy that gives gold for kills, pummeling an enemy carpet of doom with protected ranged can pay for the buildings you bought.

Madness, I tell you.

Again I have to agree with you that you can't go crazy with the cheese whiz. Thal's mods do make building decisions easier and more fun, but any rebalance introduces new exploits, too.

 

[iWant921nooow]

So, in short, I continue to believe (since I mentioned the same thing at launch), that hammer availability – especially in the early game – needs to be increased. My reasoning for this is simple: more hammers mean that more builds get completed, and completing more builds means the gamer is making more choices (about what to build next) each turn. The problem of course with increasing hammer availability in Civ 5 is the potential for the human and AI to invest those hammers in military units, leading to the so called carpet of doom.

Hello learner gamer.
Sorry but I cant agree with this. For me, its not about how many choices you have to make, its about how big impact the choices you make, have on the game. If you could, for example, build only one building every 50 turn (on quick speed), it would lead to making a good descision be much more important. If buildings took less time to build than it does right now, the descision is less important.

I am playing on quick speed though (so I can test everything much faster), so what I said above is based on playing quick speed. The experience might be different on other speeds.
I dont really got the problem you are mentioning. Since the deity AI is very sensitive, I can only have maximum 3-4 cities. (which i can build up faster). More cities than that would make my neighbours attack me very early . I dont know what strategy you have when playing, but you could try to have only 3 cities that you grow up fast, use the gold on maritimes asap.

Abit offtopic, sorry. But if the problem is building early-game buildings, why not just lower the hammer-cost of these buildings

dzx

 

[learner gamer]

Thanks all for your thoughts to date.

IMHO, this point epitomises the problem:

That way you don't have to keep rolling new maps/games looking for particular resources or placement.

After all, re-rolling is something that I’ve done a couple of times because the start has been so hammer poor. In such starts, you’re absolutely right Erilaz: IMHO, you have to prioritise a GE to get even a semblance of early game production. The motivation behind this thread is whether however, to pick up on the completely valid point made by iWant921nooow, that’s a quality choice. IMHO, it reminds me of the need I see all too often to tech metal casting early to get access to workshops – especially on flatter starts. In both cases, I would argue that the gamer’s not being a strategic genius by prioritising a GE or metal casting just to get a critical mass of hammers, but effectively being forced to make this choice to compensate for a game imbalance.

Indeed, this issue is one of the major reasons why (aside from just wanting some mindless violence ), I’m playing my current game out on chieftain, compared to my usual king and emperor games. In short, I wanted to get a better feel for the absolute level of hammer accumulation (and, as an aside, for organic growth, which Thal’s mod has done a lot to address) – and ascertain how easy it is to play infrastructure heavy, without the need to worry about having to divert hammers into units to stave off the threat of a DoW, or even to fend off aggressive barbs.

Now, as it happens, I agree wholeheartedly with the point raised here:

What you probably don’t want to do is to add early hammers that are only going to multiply in the later game, creating an imbalance in favor of production-focused civs.

because, as many have mentioned previously, it is indeed possible to produce units and buildings in a timely manner by the mid game, At that stage, your cities have grown to a point where the number of hexes a city is working helps offset the loss of one hammer (relative to Civ 4) from a mine. However, as my start all too clearly illustrated to me, even at chieftain, it can be a very slow process getting to the point where your cities have a critical mass of hammers – and I was very lucky, my current start had a large number of hills in both the capital and the surrounding lands. FWIW, if you have the time (and haven’t done so already), I’d recommend playing the first 100 turns or so of a start (even better if it lacks hills IMHO) at or around chieftain, so you can see the scale of the issue.

Turning to the other issues mentioned, I completely agree with your point iWant921nooow about the importance or quality or impact of decisions. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it at all clear from my post – for which I apologise – that I was automatically assuming that more decisions is better at this stage, because (and this was my assumption) that the decisions would be well balanced and meaningful in the context of the given game. (Indeed, the reason that I play using Thal's mod is precisely because it tends to produce more of these types of decisions during a game IMHO.) Of course, the precise number of quality or impact decisions that the gamer needs to make each turn, to maintain their interest in a game is quite subjective.

If we look at the suggestions made meanwhile to prevent the number of hammers in a Civ spiralling to yield a carpet of doom, I must admit Txurce that I’m a little confused by this assertion here:

But I don’t think adding a unit building would significantly cut down on overall unit count. It certainly wouldn’t slow the warmongers who are more likely to max out units. In fact, it would most strongly affect the builder who wants to maintain a small, contemporary fighting force.

Out of curiosity, why do you think that adding a building requirement would not slow down the warmonger but handicap the builder? I ask because I think it works for four reasons, (although I readily concede that it might be needed only if an initial hammer is added back to a mine), and want to understand what I’m missing. In short, I think it might work because:

(i) adding a building requirement diverts hammers into a building which could otherwise go into the warmonger’s unit production
(ii) to produce units in a timely fashion, the warmonger’s going to need to build more pre-requisite buildings
(iii) if needed, the warmonger’s ability to spam weak units and then mass upgrade them as a workaround, can be limited by tying the number of upgrades per turn to the number of pre-requisite buildings they have in their empire; and
(iv) IMHO, a builder might be able to stave off early attack by producing defensive units (which I specifically exempted from the building pre-requisites for this reason) and using city defences, to buy them time for their infrastructure heavy economy to start reaping benefits; at that point, they might be able to fend off subsequent attack by producing a more limited number of high tech units and / or use gold to ally with CS, or ally with other AI.

So what have I missed that means my proposed solution cripples the builder more than the warmonger?

All that said, iWant921nooow might well have hit on a key piece of the solution here:

But if the problem is building early-game buildings, why not just lower the hammer-cost of these buildings

because, if the goal is to avoid overpowering production based civs, then maybe it's beneficial to have another look at how well the costs of early game buildings scale with early hammer availability, perhaps with a view to revising some early building (hammer and gold costs) a little lower. Such a tweak could help resolve the issue by ensuring that a city needs a smaller number of hammers to reach an early game critical mass, compensating for the loss of one hammer (relative to Civ 4) from a mine. Of course, an issue that would remain is whether this would unduly favour hilly over flat starts – which perhaps takes us back to the republic social policy. Another issue might be what this would imply for the balance between early game building versus unit costs. With so many facets to consider, seriously, who’d be a modder?

 

[Txurce]

Thanks all for your thoughts to date.

IMHO, this point epitomises the problem:

After all, re-rolling is something that I’ve done a couple of times because the start has been so hammer poor. In such starts, you’re absolutely right Erilaz: IMHO, you have to prioritise a GE to get even a semblance of early game production. The motivation behind this thread is whether however, to pick up on the completely valid point made by iWant921nooow, that’s a quality choice. IMHO, it reminds me of the need I see all too often to tech metal casting early to get access to workshops – especially on flatter starts. In both cases, I would argue that the gamer’s not being a strategic genius by prioritising a GE or metal casting just to get a critical mass of hammers, but effectively being forced to make this choice to compensate for a game imbalance.

Indeed, this issue is one of the major reasons why (aside from just wanting some mindless violence ), I’m playing my current game out on chieftain, compared to my usual king and emperor games. In short, I wanted to get a better feel for the absolute level of hammer accumulation (and, as an aside, for organic growth, which Thal’s mod has done a lot to address) – and ascertain how easy it is to play infrastructure heavy, without the need to worry about having to divert hammers into units to stave off the threat of a DoW, or even to fend off aggressive barbs.

Now, as it happens, I agree wholeheartedly with the point raised here:

because, as many have mentioned previously, it is indeed possible to produce units and buildings in a timely manner by the mid game, At that stage, your cities have grown to a point where the number of hexes a city is working helps offset the loss of one hammer (relative to Civ 4) from a mine. However, as my start all too clearly illustrated to me, even at chieftain, it can be a very slow process getting to the point where your cities have a critical mass of hammers – and I was very lucky, my current start had a large number of hills in both the capital and the surrounding lands. FWIW, if you have the time (and haven’t done so already), I’d recommend playing the first 100 turns or so of a start (even better if it lacks hills IMHO) at or around chieftain, so you can see the scale of the issue.

Turning to the other issues mentioned, I completely agree with your point iWant921nooow about the importance or quality or impact of decisions. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it at all clear from my post – for which I apologise – that I was automatically assuming that more decisions is better at this stage, because (and this was my assumption) that the decisions would be well balanced and meaningful in the context of the given game. (Indeed, the reason that I play using Thal's mod is precisely because it tends to produce more of these types of decisions during a game IMHO.) Of course, the precise number of quality or impact decisions that the gamer needs to make each turn, to maintain their interest in a game is quite subjective.

If we look at the suggestions made meanwhile to prevent the number of hammers in a Civ spiralling to yield a carpet of doom, I must admit Txurce that I’m a little confused by this assertion here:

Out of curiosity, why do you think that adding a building requirement would not slow down the warmonger but handicap the builder? I ask because I think it works for four reasons, (although I readily concede that it might be needed only if an initial hammer is added back to a mine), and want to understand what I’m missing. In short, I think it might work because:

(i) adding a building requirement diverts hammers into a building which could otherwise go into the warmonger’s unit production
(ii) to produce units in a timely fashion, the warmonger’s going to need to build more pre-requisite buildings
(iii) if needed, the warmonger’s ability to spam weak units and then mass upgrade them as a workaround, can be limited by tying the number of upgrades per turn to the number of pre-requisite buildings they have in their empire; and
(iv) IMHO, a builder might be able to stave off early attack by producing defensive units (which I specifically exempted from the building pre-requisites for this reason) and using city defences, to buy them time for their infrastructure heavy economy to start reaping benefits; at that point, they might be able to fend off subsequent attack by producing a more limited number of high tech units and / or use gold to ally with CS, or ally with other AI.

So what have I missed that means my proposed solution cripples the builder more than the warmonger?

All that said, iWant921nooow might well have hit on a key piece of the solution here:

because, if the goal is to avoid overpowering production based civs, then maybe it's beneficial to have another look at how well the costs of early game buildings scale with early hammer availability, perhaps with a view to revising some early building (hammer and gold costs) a little lower. Such a tweak could help resolve the issue by ensuring that a city needs a smaller number of hammers to reach an early game critical mass, compensating for the loss of one hammer (relative to Civ 4) from a mine. Of course, an issue that would remain is whether this would unduly favour hilly over flat starts – which perhaps takes us back to the republic social policy. Another issue might be what this would imply for the balance between early game building versus unit costs. With so many facets to consider, seriously, who’d be a modder?

A lot of this has been discussed here before, although of course there's no reason why it can't be discussed again. Some of it is conjectural. For example, the consensus has been that there is no early-game hammer problem - it's supposed to be slow at the start. Some of its experiential. I don't think there's a need to play on Chieftain to demonstrate anything - I play plenty of games without spending hammers on units. And some of it is proven. Workshops aren't worth building unless you already have about 10 hammers - otherwise you're better off not wasting the turns required to build it in order to shave off 20% of a still too large number.

With regard to why unit-prerequisite buildings would hurt the builder more than the warmonger: the warmonger is building barracks and armories anyway. And defensive-minded builders will be spared doing so only if their notion of what constitutes a proper defense happens to coincide with yours. For example, I think horsemen are an excellent anti-siege unit... but they would fall in the offensive category.

 

[Thalassicus]

I've been thinking about turning Republic into 2 for several weeks, and agree it could help expansive empires in the early game.

I don't feel production in small/tall empires is a significant problem since Tradition has a Great Engineer now, and cities in these empires spend a greater proportion of the game developed (and therefore working more tiles). For conquest empires I'm enhancing early production with the Spoils of War policy, which I've buffed in 7.1b1.

On a similar note, manufactures are immensely helpful for military cities if you're a conqueror. I usually build 2-3 around my military city, typically on empty grassland tiles that wouldn't otherwise yield any production.

Unit spam and 1upt have been talked about a lot in Civ 5, but I'm honestly not concerned about it, and feel the issue was glamorized to be a bigger problem than it really is. I haven't seen it in my games. Even in the modern era crowding isn't much a problem since I shifted balance of modern armies to favor aircraft and missiles.

@Txurce
Workshops are actually useful in all cities ever since Firaxis added 2 to the building. In a small city it can easily double production.

 

[Txurce]

I've been thinking about turning Republic into 2 for several weeks, and agree it could help expansive empires in the early game.

I don't feel production in small/tall empires is a significant problem since Tradition has a Great Engineer now, and cities in these empires spend a greater proportion of the game developed (and therefore working more tiles). For conquest empires I'm enhancing early production with the Spoils of War policy, which I've buffed in 7.1b1.

On a similar note, manufactures are immensely helpful for military cities if you're a conqueror. I usually build 2-3 around my military city, typically on empty grassland tiles that wouldn't otherwise yield any production.

Unit spam and 1upt have been talked about a lot in Civ 5, but I'm honestly not concerned about it, and feel the issue was glamorized to be a bigger problem than it really is. I haven't seen it in my games. Even in the modern era crowding isn't much a problem since I shifted balance of modern armies to favor aircraft and missiles.

@Txurce
Workshops are actually useful in all cities ever since Firaxis added 2 to the building. In a small city it can easily double production.

I've never needed the hammers that Republic would bring, but think it makes sense as you said, for empires with lots of early cities.

I will try a manufactory very soon.

Thanks for the update on the workshop - I had been working off your old formula. Not to be a contrarian, but is it OP as a result?

 

[learner gamer]

IMHO, adding an extra hammer to liberty would be the equivalent of “one small step for man, one giant leap for civilization”. Seriously, this is great news if implemented!

If you’re happy with the balance of small empires Thal, the only other issue I can think of that calls for consideration is what this implies for leaders who can get access to early culture, since they’d now potentially get access to a little more early production as well. I'll give it some thought, but I'm more than happy to playtest a liberty amended mod if it helps.

@Txurce: try rolling a flat, non-riverside (so no watermill access) calendar resource start. I’ve had the mis-fortune to roll them a few times. In my experience, the manufactory takes on a whole new importance on those types of maps.

 

[Txurce]

@Txurce: try rolling a flat, non-riverside (so no watermill access) calendar resource start. I’ve had the mis-fortune to roll them a few times. In my experience, the manufactory takes on a whole new importance on those types of maps.

As often as I play, I've had my share. But I just see it as the price of settling in that location. I almost always build a colosseum and then a library, and shrug off how long it takes. Bigger builds usually incorporate the workshop.

Still, I will definitely consider a manufactory in the future.