I concur to an extent. I'm on the fence regarding the point about having all leaf techs (and civics) become prerequisites for something. A good example of where leaf techs added a positive game element was Civ4's Horseback Riding: it was an expensive tech for the period, and wasn't necessary; the rest of the tree could be filled out to entirety without it. However, it unlocked a very useful unit (later, a building too) that while useful, could be ignored and successful strategies could be made without it. The fastest way to most victory conditions (a speed run) was to ignore it completely, one of the safest ways to play was to beeline for it.I think there's already about enough techs & civics; but what should happen is all remaining leaf civics and techs should be added as a prereq for a tech/civic in the next era and instead of two repeatable civics, a new civic requiring both current repeatable ones should be added that gives extra VP points but does nothing else with that one made repeatable.
It might also be a good idea to increase tech costs (probably not civic cost though; the human's civic progression rate in the Let's plays I see appeared fine to me, it's only the human's science that's too fast.)
For sure tech is too cheap and needs to be more costly. Instead the game design appears to focus on making things cheaper, especially when on the boosts parade.
Right now I feel most of my games are on tech auto-pilot. In my opinion we don't need more choices but diversity of choices or at least diversity of cost.
One thought is to correlate game choices we make in the areas of culture, religion, government, budgets, war weariness, resources, happiness, map location, etc. factor into how much something costs.
Hmmm. Now that I think about, maybe I can run with this idea and create a Science Penalties mod.
- If being peaceful helps reduce the cost of whatever tech, then warmongering should increase the cost of whatever tech.
- Haven't built planes? Spacey techs are way more expensive.
- Is your Civ is located in the middle of Pangaea? Then sailing techs should cost you mega more.
- Didn't build the building or unit that the whatever tech granted you? 50-turn penalty on all derivative techs from that whatever tech.
- etc.
@zoundmine I think they tried that to some extend with BE/BERT. It wasn't that successful in that case. But I really like the idea.
I think it's less about insulting the intelligence of Civ veterans and more about making the game approachable to newcomers to the series and the genre. It's all about the Benjamins, babyI know Firaxis is worried about confusing us, but they give us little credit for our intelligence. We'll figure it out. Stop dumbing down the game.
; I think people still view technological research (and consequently campus development) as the fundamental power source that unlocks elements that facilitate generalized progression, whereas people still view cultural research as something specific to a cultural victory and consequently prioritize campus investment heavily over theater investment.
True. I imagine theater square adjacency (and theater squares in general, particularly the Acropolis) are going to have some fine-tuning or complete overhaul in expansion packs.It's a lot easier to get adjacency bonuses for Campuses than Theaters as a normal civ. Any city near two adjoining mountain tiles can get extra powerful campuses immediately; Theaters would require next to world wonder (not happening early on high difficulty levels) or the usual district fallback of next to two districts (which campuses would also get.)
What I am seeing on later Let's Plays vs earlier ones is that civics granting culture bonuses have become a lot more popular along with extreme beelining to the ones unlocking Corps and Armies.