I haven't played Civ5 in a while and was wondering if science...

[Gucumatz]

Has the science issue (the +5% per city founded) from BNW been addressed yet. As a whole it made going wide completely illogical from a mathematical sense in most cases and therefore led to optimal human points of creating only a few cities (say 3-5) in Multiplayer. Effectively, creating new cities only served to hinder you and make you obsolete and it de-incentivized early game wars often. Point being, consensus among MPers was it was somewhat unbalanced. Tall games had already been probably the best strategy before hand but now incentive to go wide has been drastically reduced.

 

[Ninakoru]

Nope, is the same as always. I find it is a good brake to stop wide supertech power.

 

[charon2112]

Wouldn't +5% science per city be good for a wide empire?

 

[Jaybe]

Sure charon, but it's MINUS 5%/city (on a standard-size map). -3 for large, -2 for huge.
EDIT: Doh! It IS +5% to the COST of the techs. Must've had a brain short.

The science penalty is an abstract device to penalize UNDEVELOPED wide empires. I believe it adjusts the base cost of each tech, so when you have gobs of science the increase is negligible. It really is not a problem -- much less a problem than ranged/siege units being able to so easily take their targets down to zero hit points.

 

[Crafty Bison]

I think liberty should include a reduction in this penalty somewhere at the bottom so you have to commit to the full tree, down to 3% or 4%. It would make liberty more competitive with tradition, and allow a wide empire if you plan for it.
I really love Liberty starts but know I'm usually playing a sub-optimal game (in sp anyway). It'd be good to see a balance between the two reintroduced.

 

[limluigi]

I think liberty should include a reduction in this penalty somewhere at the bottom so you have to commit to the full tree, down to 3% or 4%. It would make liberty more competitive with tradition, and allow a wide empire if you plan for it.
I really love Liberty starts but know I'm usually playing a sub-optimal game (in sp anyway). It'd be good to see a balance between the two reintroduced.

If that would be the case then liberty would almost always be the optimum tree. With just 4 cities of your empire, you would have an 8% cost out compared to people going for tradition with the same amount of cities. Not to mention it doesn't really solve the wide problem, since people would still probably settle for less cities even if they're going liberty because of that 3% tech cost increase.

 

[georgie]

If that would be the case then liberty would almost always be the optimum tree. With just 4 cities of your empire, you would have an 8% cost out compared to people going for tradition with the same amount of cities. Not to mention it doesn't really solve the wide problem, since people would still probably settle for less cities even if they're going liberty because of that 3% tech cost increase.

However, it would provide a needed alternative to tradition. Tradition, as is, is already almost always the optimum tree.

I'm not sure if there's ever going to be any solution or what would even be a solution to this "wide problem." However, it will make wider empires much more tenable if a player chooses to go down Liberty.

 

[limluigi]

However, it would provide a needed alternative to tradition. Tradition, as is, is already almost always the optimum tree.

I'm not sure if there's ever going to be any solution or what would even be a solution to this "wide problem." However, it will make wider empires much more tenable if a player chooses to go down Liberty.

As I said, it would be more "tenable" but not optimal. Just like what it is today. The 5% cost increase is actually manageable if you don't mind getting behind on tech. But the same could still be said even if it would be changed to a 3% cost increase. There would still be no reason to expand your empire within those what I would call "core cities". The same would still be said, just that you get more techs due to lesser science increase cost but you won't necessarily have the incentive to expand.

 

[Karmah]

Ask yourself before settling how hard it is for a new city to produce 6% of your current science.
In most case it isnt.
When i want to go wide ,I usually just go wide 'slower' but I still end up with 10 to 20 cities lategame. Just every new city I found will cost me quite some gold , up to 2k a city in order to rush buy growth and science building in order to have it produce me as fast as possible those 6% of my science ,where a new city becomes a plus. (but endgame with order + mercantilism and big ben it s just quite cheap to rush buy).

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

It isn't your current science, that would mean the penalty was compounded, which it isn't. The break even is 5% of the capital's science output.

IIRC, heuristic maths shows 8 cities is the ideal number for liberty wide for ideal ratio bpt/tech cost for a game lasting about 280 turns.

 

[Karmah]

yeah well ok it ain t your current science , it is the tech cost , so more like 1-1/1.05 so 4,7% of science penalty
That doesn t change much

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Each time you settle a new city send an internal trade route there with food. Build or buy a library and a university ASAP and you'll hardly notice your science getting slowed at all. A well developed wide empire will still beat an OCC empire in the science game. That Jesuit education belief is great for going wide.

The cost increase just nerfs those cheesey 10 cities by turn 100 strategies.

 

[Strategist83]

going wide completely illogical from a mathematical sense

No, it didn't.

Do the math: It's a 5% malus. Early cities you found provide much more than a 5% bonus compared to the empire - new cities increase science rate, same as they increase culture rate. The only reason to hold off settling more cities remains a) running out of happiness or b) preparing to construct a national wonder. The science malus is a speed bump and nothing more.

It's only later that new cities initially decrease your science rate. Even then, they just need a little population and the basic science buildings to break even. You need to be late in the game with few turns left for new cities to not be worth founding.

 

[joshua43214]

I have noticed from both challenges and GoTM's that the folks that are getting the sub 250 turn wins tend to have 6 cities, and cross 1400 bpt. Compared to OCC where you are effectively capped at ~650 bpt, going wider makes more sense if you can stay happy

 

[Quineloe]

No, it didn't.

Do the math: It's a 5% malus. Early cities you found provide much more than a 5% bonus compared to the empire - new cities increase science rate, same as they increase culture rate.

Is that so? I thought, the more cities you settle, the slower you progress through policies, because unlike science, which is mainly boosted by buildings that you can have in every city, the big culture buildings - guilds and wonders - can only be built once. So any new city you found gives you very few culture while considerably raising policy cost.
+1 liberty, +3 monument, +4 amphitheater, +5 opera house and +6 with museum. Then you get at best +58% from Broadcast tower and Sistine Chapel, so we're looking at +11 culture from a city without unique buildings.

 

[Polisurgist]

I like the idea, but I still think it would be better to have a cumulative penalty on the output of each city in both science and culture, than having it add to the costs of policies and techs the way it works now. Every city would then be an increase, the increases would have diminishing returns but would never go negative (though they'd eventually get real close to zero).

 

[Amask]

It sounds nice at first, but it would be almost like civ III. There is no good reason for the cities built later to be less productive than the ones built earlier. Would i be able to exchange the penalty between two cities, this last city I captured that happens to be very nice, and a previously built oil-grabbing tundra city?

 

[Dardis]

Is that so? I thought, the more cities you settle, the slower you progress through policies, because unlike science, which is mainly boosted by buildings that you can have in every city, the big culture buildings - guilds and wonders - can only be built once. So any new city you found gives you very few culture while considerably raising policy cost.
+1 liberty, +3 monument, +4 amphitheater, +5 opera house and +6 with museum. Then you get at best +58% from Broadcast tower and Sistine Chapel, so we're looking at +11 culture from a city without unique buildings.

The only thing with just basing culture generation on city building output, is that there are usually other culture boosters from width. For example, early width with shrines in the build order drastically increases the likelihood of getting mosques/pagodas/monasteries, which each give another +2 culture per city. Also the city-state culture challenges are based on total culture produced, so you become a shoe-in for victory if you are much wider than the opposition.