Is the Happiness penalty from settlement limit a joke ?!

[Leyrann]

Let's hope NOT, because obviously everyone finds ICS boring right?
Maybe you should have said I hope so, because some players despise ICS as much as you seem to despise tall so let's hope both gameplays are equally valid so that everyone can have fun playing the way they prefer, thank you

I will grant that genuine ICS is not desirable, but the series already solved that issue back in Civ IV. And then refused to go back to it. Civ V was a complete mess (and I will repeat, the previous game solved it, so there was no need to ruin the entire game in a misguided belief that they had to solve it differently), Civ VI arguably made expanding a bit too easy but imo had a pretty decent balance, and based on available footage Civ VII seems to have a decent balance. I'm still a bit worried about having a city cap but it does seem like it's a soft cap, and that it can be increased in a reasonable manner.

But let's be real here for a second. If you want to build just 10 cities, you're already considered a "wide player". That's just bollocks. The only game that has such ridiculous ideas on the concept is Civ V. A "tall" build, if you want one to exist so badly, should be like 6-9 cities. A genuine wide build would be 20+ cities. It's ridiculous to pretend that 8 or 9 cities should be the target for an 'average' game.

 

[ehecatzin]

what I hope is that both tall and wide strategies are viable

 

[stealth_nsk]

what I hope is that both tall and wide strategies are viable

Firaxis redefined the terms for tall and wide now. It's now more about cities vs. towns than about the number of settlements.

I found it right, because balancing tall vs. wide in Civ5 definitions never worked well.

 

[Leyrann]

what I hope is that both tall and wide strategies are viable

I'm fine with that, so long as the definitions of tall and wide are sensible. Most advocates of the dichotomy do not have sensible definitions.

(as for what I consider sensible definitions, see the post above yours)

 

[Evie]

What constitute "wide" depends a lot on how large a world you're playing on.

 

[AriochIV]

You can largely compensate for the Happiness penalty with more Happiness generation, but once you get into the Crisis stage the additional Happiness penalties become unmanageable. You'll start to lose settlements, and the game can take low-Happiness settlements away from you during the Age transition.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

You can largely compensate for the Happiness penalty with more Happiness generation, but once you get into the Crisis stage the additional Happiness penalties become unmanageable. You'll start to lose settlements, and the game can take low-Happiness settlements away from you during the Age transition.

- And this is what I think a lot of people, referencing previous Civ games, are missing.

Civ VII apparently allows you to bend the rules and circumvent caps and 'penalties' considerably during the Ages.

BUT comes the Crisis period at the end of the Age, and the saber-toothed chickens may come home to roost on your keyboard.

I am by no means certain how well this will work - hundreds of thousands or millions of players are bound to find ways to game the system, as they almost always have, but I think I see what the game design does: it allows you to play almost any way you want: wide, tall, wobblingly wide, totteringly tall - until the end of the Age. Only then, it seems, will you all too frequently find out just how unstable your pushing the limits was and is.

That's my take, anyway: can't wait to find out for certain on 6 February . . .

 

[rocksinmypath]

I imagine celebrations play a key role in the tall/wide choice. In the example in the OP, the 14th settlement must be incurring a global penalty of 70 happiness, dropping it from 164 to 94. That's a 43% reduction. Now, I don't know exactly how much happiness each celebration requires, but assuming the cycle was 10 turns long before the penalty, we're looking at 17-18 turns after the penalty is applied. That's an extra 7-8 turns you have to wait before you can some pretty heavy yield bonuses. For example, I think Oligarchy gives +20% food and something similar to that in production for 10 turns. That feels to me like a pretty big incentive to not breach the settlement limit.

There's also potentially implication on over-expansion via settling vs. conquest. This system appears to punish the former more heavily, at least if you're selective about what conquered cities to keep. From what I've seen, settlements you conquer take some time (15 turns?) before they start generating yields for you. So, assuming you conquer and keep a city that already has the infrastructure to provide 70 happiness, you just suffer that penalty for just 15 turns. I'm assuming it usually takes a lot longer to develop a brand-new town to the point where it can generate that much happiness.