Is it just me, or is a wheat tile worse than a non-wheat tile?

[Bibor]

I don't know if I'm being Civ Fanatics-punked, or what. My point was that it's really stupid that I value a trading post tile over a wheat tile in pretty much all occasions after I get my Maritimes up and running. I will hardly ever work that wheat tile again.

Why would you prefer a 4-yield tile over a 5-yield tile? Since when does 2 gold trump 2 food?

 

[Martin Alvito]

Why would you prefer a 4-yield tile over a 5-yield tile? Since when does 2 gold trump 2 food?

If you have enough food to work the optimal H/G tileset via Maritimes, and you're in unhappiness, 2G > 2F. Since under Maritimes you will never stay happy for long, at that stage G > F. If you're three-spacing your cities, tiles are scarce and "place better" does not apply.

The difference in your experience is that you are four-plus spacing.

 

[lordrune]

If you have enough food to work the optimal H/G tileset via Maritimes, and you're in unhappiness, 2G > 2F. Since under Maritimes you will never stay happy for long, at that stage G > F. If you're three-spacing your cities, tiles are scarce and "place better" does not apply.

The difference in your experience is that you are four-plus spacing.

So - you're spamming your empire with as many cities as the engine allows you to, to get the maximum benefit from as many maritime city states as you can?

Not judging your playstyle - it's probably a very optimal way to play. Possibly even the most optimal way - which is a bit concerning.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Three spacing has a laundry list of significant advantages: large trade routes due to extremely minimal road maintenance, greater benefits from Maritime, not needing to buy tiles and the ability to share Hammer tiles as needed to push key buildings. Add exponential growth rates and maximization of available resources due to auto 2/2/1 or better city tiles, and it's not hard to see why the ICS players are so rabidly in favor of the approach.

Personally, I warmonger very aggressively early, then backfill cities. Spacing varies with available land and resources. Sometimes I three-space, other times I don't. I build a lot fewer cities than an ICS player and go vertical early.

 

[lordrune]

Hmm. You make sense there

Would you consider the style of ICS viable if maritime city states did not provide stacking per-city food benefits?

 

[Martin Alvito]

Yes, because it would still be the Hammer-maximizing approach, and probably the GPT maximizing approach as well due to trade routes.

As I've said before, ICS works because you only shoot yourself in the foot on Science in the short term. With the way Civ is designed (Food growth requirements scale with size, buff city tiles), ICS is always the Hammer maximizer. You control ICS by introducing penalties along other axes. In Civ 4, city maintenance would eat an ICS player's beakers alive. This time, the devs thought that Social Policy costs would keep things under control, but SPs aren't broadly valuable enough to introduce a meaningful opportunity cost.

 

[MkLh]

The point is that they shouldn't. Both of those corporations were bad ideas as well.

Maritime city states need to be nerfed, as they are taking away thought from city placements and turning every spot into a good city spot. They make farms virtually obsolete. They make your awesome river cities not much better than your newly built almost no resource hill cities.

Rather the food tiles should be improved. Growing a city is difficult enough already, and city placement doesn't matter much anyway as long as all food resource tiles suck.

 

[Celevin]

Rather the food tiles should be improved. Growing a city is difficult enough already, and city placement doesn't matter much anyway as long as all food resource tiles suck.

I dunno, Maritimes are flawed well past just giving a lot of food to one city. The bonus multiplies based on how many cities you have, so it greatly encourages ICS. If it was, say, "+food equal to 20% of the city's population", then it wouldn't be so bad.

Click on a city and see what percent of your food is given by Maritimes (in a game with 3+ maritime allies). Now remember that every single city in your empire is getting that crazy crazy benefit!

 

[Post Monkeh]

i liked the way it was in civ 2. you could build a merchant, i think it was, and move the merchant to another city, giving that city 2 food at the expense of 2 food from the city that produced the merchant.

it has always seemed a bit silly that food cannot be traded, since it's probably the most widely traded commodity in the world, and it would add a different bit of strategy if you could have one city that is soley purposed with producing as much food as it possibly can in order to export some to cities based in areas that have everything else except a good source of food. how many major cities in the world have produced all their own food for the past few hundred years?

 

[Beef Hammer]

Honestly I've been having fun with games with only as many CS as there are Civs, or no CS at all and replacing them with a few more real civs. Makes everything you do, or can do, that much more meaningful. Plus I'm not really a fan of CS.

 

[andrewlt]

Most of the time you can simply work a different tile if you want the trading post. City populations are often much lower than workable tiles per city. Perhaps you should work on your city placement

There is no better city placement than ICS...

 

[Celevin]

Honestly I've been having fun with games with only as many CS as there are Civs, or no CS at all and replacing them with a few more real civs. Makes everything you do, or can do, that much more meaningful. Plus I'm not really a fan of CS.

I'm a big fan of city states, I just think the Maritime and Cultural bonuses are overpowered . Cultural bonuses help make 1-city empires the fastest culture win, and Maritimes are definitely overpowered. Both of these need to be fixed.

I think the "friendly" level bonuses should be retained if you capture the city states as well.

 

[andrewlt]

The funny thing, though, is that wheat is arguably the best bonus resource aside from fish. The others are even worse.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

The funny thing, though, is that wheat is arguably the best bonus resource aside from fish. The others are even worse.

Well at least aluminum and coal provides lot of hammer for industrial+ wonder building city (if you get lucky and coal and aluminum pops nearby lol).

Most of the time you can simply work a different tile if you want the trading post. City populations are often much lower than workable tiles per city. Perhaps you should work on your city placement

I agree. Having a resource in your city 3-hex radius doesn't come with a huge flashing neon banner saying "WORK ME OR I CRASH YOUR PC".

So, you guys' argument against criticizing this game for having useless tiles is that they are indeed useless to the point that they should be ignored? Can the defense of CiV get any more absurd than this?

And newsflash, ICS trumps those big old 4 ~ 6 tiles wide city placement.

 

[Paeanblack]

Would you consider the style of ICS viable if maritime city states did not provide stacking per-city food benefits?

If your population is constrained by your happiness, absolutely.

1) The city center tile is extremely productive. It's a minimum of 2/2/1, but it will cost you an extra unhappiness point to 'work' the tile compared to the alternatives. Early in the game, this can be worthwhile, because of point #2.

2) There is no penalty for single-digit unhappiness when you are producing settlers. If you are REXing, you effectively have a free 9-point happiness buffer and can put off dealing with the problem until later, which are fixable because of point #3.

3) There are 3 happiness effects that scale to the # of cities: Meritocracy, Forbidden Palace, and Planned Economy. These are neatly spaced out in terms of when you get them, so if you expand exponentially at the right pace, you can hit these exactly when they are needed.

It's these three things in concert that make ICS work so well. Even without any Maritimes, a limited happiness budget will produce more gold, science*, and hammers with a large number of small cities than any other arrangement.

*A single size-10 city will produce more science than 10 size-1 cities. Ten turns later, 10 size-2 cities will produce more science than one size-11 city. REX will eat slightly into your research rate early on, but those losses are paid back fiftyfold.

Take away Maritimes, and ICS is still superior. However, Maritimes just make it absolutely silly.

Perhaps each Maritime ally should just boost every city's growth rate by (city-size)%

 

[andrewlt]

Well at least aluminum and coal provides lot of hammer for industrial+ wonder building city (if you get lucky and coal and aluminum pops nearby lol).

By bonus resources, I don't mean strategic resources or luxury resources. It's just the one that provides nothing except a bonus yield to the tile.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills also made many food resource tiles obsolete, what's your point?

Except that is completely not true. In fact, it is rather the opposite of true. False even. Sid's Sushi and Cereal mills gave food in amounts dependent on the NUMBER OF FOOD RESOURCES you had. Specific ones, yes, but it was directly tied in to tile yields.

They also came in the last quarter of game time, and were part of the payoff for doing powerful late game teching. They also didn't scale down well. Smaller maps didn't have good cost-benefit relationships with them. Even standard sized maps it wasn't obvious if you should try to found and spread them.

In comparison, Maritime states turn money into food, do so from turn 1, and cut out a lot of the interesting of city management.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Hmm. You make sense there

Would you consider the style of ICS viable if maritime city states did not provide stacking per-city food benefits?

So, one major concept of civ 5 is this:

1 citizen = 1 Happiness
1 city = 2 happiness + 1 free citizen.

A size 1 city works 2 tiles, and costs 3 happiness.
Larger cities take longer to grow, and therefor take longer to 'consume' your extra happiness. You will work less tiles over a given period waiting for one city to grow to size from size 5 to 10, then creating a second city and having it grow to size 4.

Multiple civics and wonders decrease the per city happiness cost. If you have just one '1 happiness per city' modifier, it is just as efficient to settle a new city, then it is to grow an old one. 2 Such things and you actually get more tiles worked per happiness from more cities, than from larger cities.

Consider if you have +1 happiness per trade route, +1 happiness per city from Forbidden Palace. A newly settled city provides two worked tiles (city center + one other) and will grow after accumulating just 15 food, and only 'costs' 1 happiness.

Yes Maritime states make this even more ridiculous since they will grow to size 3 in a handful of turns, but that doesn't mean they are necessary.


The problem is really just how counter intuitive this all is. There are so many mechanics in the game trying to tell you NOT to grow, but still this is so completely doable.

 

[Bibor]

Except that is completely not true. In fact, it is rather the opposite of true. False even. Sid's Sushi and Cereal mills gave food in amounts dependent on the NUMBER OF FOOD RESOURCES you had. Specific ones, yes, but it was directly tied in to tile yields.

They also came in the last quarter of game time, and were part of the payoff for doing powerful late game teching. They also didn't scale down well. Smaller maps didn't have good cost-benefit relationships with them. Even standard sized maps it wasn't obvious if you should try to found and spread them.

In comparison, Maritime states turn money into food, do so from turn 1, and cut out a lot of the interesting of city management.

Sorry, but you're the one who's wrong. The value of non-freshwater Wheat in CIV5 starts to scale down when other tiles become more powerful and when cities grow large, which is in the late game. Exactly when Sushi enters the scene.

Also Sid's didn't rely on your own resources. As a matter of fact, in most of my games the majority of seafood and rice came from trades. After I got Sid's I usually removed workers from my resource food tiles and changed all farms to cottages. Thus the effects are basically the same.

Also, maritime city-states don't come from turn one.

Can't wait for the maritimes to get the nerf bat. 99% of arguments on this forum are "BUT MARITIME !!!1ONELEVEN".

 

[Bandobras Took]

I can agree that there was no point in making food so scarce and then putting in a city-state that gives it per city.

Just as there was little point in making 24-turn (or so) population growth cost the same amount of unhappiness as 3-turn population growth.