This is just an open feeler to how people are perceiving the mid to late game in terms of how or whether it becomes a drag after a while. I'll leave it really as open-ended as that because I don't want to suggest what people should be feeling (I'll post my own thoughts in a separate post).
Late-Game Drag
- Thread starter Gidoza
- Start date
The thought that comes to mind for me.is how easy it is to replace units later in the game. Early on, money isn't available much and speedbuild is something exceptional in most cases: point being, you can't build everything and if you're short of troops, too bad.
Late game, I find myself purchasing everything all the time. It's rather annoying, actually. But more to the point - I've played several games basically without a military at all and can simply conjure one up as needed in the late game and repel whatever is thrown at me. It strikes me as...too easy.
On the other hand, once I have a military running, the cap is so high that moving units around takes all day. So long as units are so easy to purchase in a flash anyways, I'm not sure of the need for such high levels of unit capacity when either attacker or defender is readily able to reinforce at any time (this is like having a "backup" unit capacity. This is my experience, anyways.
Late game, I find myself purchasing everything all the time. It's rather annoying, actually. But more to the point - I've played several games basically without a military at all and can simply conjure one up as needed in the late game and repel whatever is thrown at me. It strikes me as...too easy.
On the other hand, once I have a military running, the cap is so high that moving units around takes all day. So long as units are so easy to purchase in a flash anyways, I'm not sure of the need for such high levels of unit capacity when either attacker or defender is readily able to reinforce at any time (this is like having a "backup" unit capacity. This is my experience, anyways.
ElliotS
Warmonger
I think it's unavoidable in the design of 4x games. I think it would be cool if train stations and seaports could function as slower airports. (So a town with a train station connects to all others on the same continent and you can send units between the two with a 2-4 turn delay. Same with seaports and other seaports, but also have those work for boats.)
It would be an automated moving action that would save a ton of time and effort, bridge the gap to airports and make open borders less needed late game for unit movement. (Which is a pretty big source of complaints.)
Unfortunately I bet it would be hard to code, and is probably outside the scope of the mod. I wonder if a modmod could be made?
It would be an automated moving action that would save a ton of time and effort, bridge the gap to airports and make open borders less needed late game for unit movement. (Which is a pretty big source of complaints.)
Unfortunately I bet it would be hard to code, and is probably outside the scope of the mod. I wonder if a modmod could be made?
Your note hits on a tangential point I've been thinking about for a while as well. The function of buildings is key, related to how resources grow through the game.
My question is this: what, really, is the point of having all kinds of resources grow with tech and time, and then making all the Late-Game buildings and units more expensive as well? In a certain way - nothing has happened. All I really sense in the late game is that there are large numbers everywhere, tiles have all kinds of symbols on them, but the pace is roughly the same.
So my question is - why not just keep the pace the same? Let a Battleship cost 170 gold...and eliminate the 627 gold bonuses you get between Dromon and Battleship so that gold has a certain meaningful predictability to it throughout the game. Similarly, buildings don't need to cost 1500 production when the production units aren't shifting so much. What I'm saying I guess is that increasing values with time just seems symbolic and unnecessary in the face of eye pollution.
My question is this: what, really, is the point of having all kinds of resources grow with tech and time, and then making all the Late-Game buildings and units more expensive as well? In a certain way - nothing has happened. All I really sense in the late game is that there are large numbers everywhere, tiles have all kinds of symbols on them, but the pace is roughly the same.
So my question is - why not just keep the pace the same? Let a Battleship cost 170 gold...and eliminate the 627 gold bonuses you get between Dromon and Battleship so that gold has a certain meaningful predictability to it throughout the game. Similarly, buildings don't need to cost 1500 production when the production units aren't shifting so much. What I'm saying I guess is that increasing values with time just seems symbolic and unnecessary in the face of eye pollution.
I don't think you understand the core of the game. Things cost more late game because you are making more. If it was the same you'd be making 10 tanks a turn at turn 125.
G
Well either gold cost has to increase or gold maintenance has to increase, otherwise theres no reason to pursue more gold buildings, trade routes, economic wonders, etc as the game goes on
I think you missed my point. The problem I'm pointing out is that *they don't really cost more*. If you increase the cost of units, and then give a whole pile of production and gold boosts, then there is no cost increase.
The difference with the late game is that there is gold readily available to purchase one unit somewhere pretty much all the time - and this is usually all you need to fend off an opponent (in my experience). My general assessment is that the large sums of gold generated later in the game are beyond the point of overkill.
EDIT: And to speak more closely to your response to my post, consider that early on I might be earning 5 gold in contrast to a 170-gold Dromon; later, though a Battleship is above 1000 gold, the gold-per-city ratio is much higher, which makes Battleships cheaper. What I'm saying is that the ratio shouldn't be changing with time: the Late-Game expression of "purchasing a Battleship" should be the same as trying to squeeze a Dromon out of 5GPT.
ElliotS
Warmonger
If you don't want gold costs to go up: Do you remove all gold buildings like bank and stock exchange, or simply allow the player to buy hundreds of times more stuff?
If you remove those: What do you expect the player to build? Especially when/if you do the same for production, science, happiness or any other resource/yield.
It's an invariable problem in 4x games because people need to be able to build things. Unless you've managed a 4th dimensional solution I think the best you can do is some tweaks to reduce tedium like what I suggested.
You don't understand. The point of civ's economy is that you chase ever increasing numbers. Constantly moving the goal posts means that players must actively work to keep up. If you make mistakes or behave inefficiently you will fall behind. If you don't have that mechanic then the game truly is tedium,
First of all, population grows over time, which will increase the amount of
and 
available, regardless of what buildings or policies do.Secondly, its very important that costs scale over time, otherwise I just get knights or lancers before everyone else and win the game. The scaling costs help keep
as a yield balanced.What you are suggesting would lead to massive amounts of units being pumped out, even if you removed banks or other gold bonuses
tu_79
Deity
All I can say is that right now economy is working, even if the numbers are higher and higher.
There's no inherent tedious late game for the 4x genre. There are two solutions here. Automate a big part (auto moves for harbors would solve a 10th of this) or we put limits so it stays at human scale.
Limits are already in place. It only rests to know if current numbers are manageable or are still a bit too much. If not, it can be lowered a little.
There's no inherent tedious late game for the 4x genre. There are two solutions here. Automate a big part (auto moves for harbors would solve a 10th of this) or we put limits so it stays at human scale.
Limits are already in place. It only rests to know if current numbers are manageable or are still a bit too much. If not, it can be lowered a little.
LukaSlovenia29
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2016
- Messages
- 1,500
Gazebo, have you ever toyed with the idea of lowering the amount of available gold (sources) in the mid/late game, or changing from buying units to only investing into units (like with buildings)?
Enrico Swagolo
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2013
- Messages
- 2,387
I think everything works fine. Sure, the yields (and costs) go up with time, but it'd kill the purpose of the game if that wasn't happening? I do agree that some buildings late game are on the weak side, but the threads should focus on them, not dragons
No - the gold balance is actually fine when you consider the cost of unit upgrades and the number of cities you can invest in. I actually feel like game balance is pretty solid right now on the economic level.
Re: auto moves and magic teleport harbors, not gonna happen. The AI has a hard enough time with airlifts as it is.
G
First of all, population grows over time, which will increase the amount of
Secondly, its very important that costs scale over time, otherwise I just get knights or lancers before everyone else and win the game. The scaling costs help keep
What you are suggesting would lead to massive amounts of units being pumped out, even if you removed banks or other gold bonuses
Again, I don't get how you come to this based on what I'm saying. What I'm getting at is that we should be able to purchase less Lancers overall at the time of Lancers and not more; every building in every city does not need to be constructed, and it isn't necessary to have an instant military available at all times past the initial game phase.
Didn't you suggest battleship and dromon should have the same cost? Its really important that they don't. Your logic leads me to think about raising the costs of late game units, but then you suggested lowering them
On that note, I think lancers are fairly priced. I could costs of stuff like infantry or tanks go up though
ElliotS
Warmonger
If the AI needs help airlifting, wouldn't it make sense to address that? And what better way to test and get data on it than to make such a behavior more common?
If the AI needs help airlifting, wouldn't it make sense to address that? And what better way to test and get data on it than to make such a behavior more common?
They do okay, but it is one of those features that humans will always understand better. Let's not build the end-game around that.
Don't get mad at VP for the perils of 1UPT unit spam late-game. Get mad at Firaxis.
G
tu_79
Deity
Mixed things.
Issue 1. Still too many units mid-late game for his taste.
Issue 2. He didn't understand why cost arise so much in this mod, compared to vanilla.
You were answering his issue #2, better than others. So he complaints that you don't get what he is saying.
For issue 1, I'm still finding more units that I'd like to, so if you (all) were so kind to point to me where I can find that code, I'd try to lower mid-late game limits, just for myself.
For issue 2, Gidoza has a point, but I think he isn't able to explain it correctly. I'll try.
So we start with 1 person, making just a few coins, and a few hammers. With that we can barely produce a warrior in 10 or so turns. Obviously we aren't going to produce a tank with that. Then, we have 5-6 cities with 25-30 pop. They produce like 30 times more, but the warrior is no longer available (if it were, we could produce 30 times more warriors). Now we have spearsman and swordsman that are more costly, but no 30 times more costly, so we can produce a couple of swordsmen in 10 turns. All fine and sound. Then we enter Medieval and things begin to scale up. x2, x3, x4, ... you know the stuff.
In renaissance we might have 70 times more production and gold than the starting one, but grace to the scaling thing, we are producing 70x4=280 times more gold (but so does maintenance). Those are big numbers now. Costs had to rise accordingly. While having bigger numbers makes it easier to tune up, it becomes a little daunting.
CrazyG explained correctly that if the cost for the next generation unit is not greatly increased, you could spam them with a not so good economy. But with the scaling, the cost increase is higher than what anyone would expect in a normal civ game. This scaling thing is always making me balance between getting more techs in the era or rush to the next, but produces really high numbers. Removing the scaling would put back numbers to sanity levels, but I'm sure there would be undesirable effects too.
To limit the size of the army, there's supply limit. To limit the replacement rate, there's increased costs for units and cooldowns to city purchases. If you want a struggling economy, raise cost of everything a 30%, but expect longer games (more turns).
The supply limit changes as-is rankled a lot of people. I could lower them further but expect fallout.
G
G
