Let's talk real population values

[Bibor]

I have no formula at hand, but I'm willing to help create it.

The reason for this is simple - I have a gut feeling that high population is undervalued, especially when it comes to production, provided enough hill or riverside lumbermill terrain is available.
Of course, primary issues are worker turns, amenities and housing, however, I find - again, this is gut feeling - that production is a bottleneck. I'm either unlocking wonders, generating great people or science faster than I can keep up with production. Now, I know industrial zones generate a nice amount of production, but lets be honest, so does worked terrain. I mean, we are chasing +4 adjacency industrial zones, production which is equal to one plains hill mine. A mistake I do myself, at least.

I think policy cards like New Deal and Retainers and entertainment complexes deserve a second look.

Even for wider empires that also want to go taller, perhaps we're blindly focusing on certain cards...

UPDATE:
Here's the spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Iy-sFzt0iDRNP23Ogk9v14EpaY0yvuBEWkl2NP2P9hQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Builderphile]

I would like to see a study on this. I know the current consensus coming out of the expert (particularly Chinese) community is that 10 pop should be the default maximum for any city.

As a player with a "tall" persuasion, I have wondered (and hoped) that having a large population is better than previously thought.

 

[whacker]

The most efficient city size is without a doubt 10, as you get the 50% bonus from district buildings and you can build 4 districs. You can usually grow to 6-8 pop and chop the remaining food. There really is no reason other than having fun playing tall/fluff/roleplay to get big cities.
Sure, you will have fantastic cities after 200 turns of growing and developing, but you could as well have met any victory condition. In Contrast to faith/gold/science and culture(tourism), production and food will not win you the game in the end.

I really don`t like it, but thats how it is.

 

[Tabarnak]

In Contrast to faith/gold/science and culture(tourism), production and food will not win you the game in the end.

Not always the case for mp games tho. More length, less free stuff from AIs. We have to almost build everything by ourselves. Factories are a must! So is production. Not rare to see 16-19 pop cities near the end(time where sp games are already won by a mile).

Also, other competent humans have ways to counter your path to a cultural or religious victory. Making games harder and longer to win.

That always been a problem in almost all civ iterations. The AI doesn't help to that at all. What about AIs refusing a lot more deal? Or making more units that actually fortify instead of randomly moving around without any reasons?

Solutions are there, it's just Firaxis's will.

 

[whacker]

Not always the case for mp games tho. More length, less free stuff from AIs. We have to almost build everything by ourselves. Factories are a must! So is production. Not rare to see 16-19 pop cities near the end(time where sp games are already won by a mile).

That is of course true, but mp and sp are almost two different games.

 

[Bibor]

Okay, I started on the spreadsheet and I linked it into the OP.

Looking at these numbers, food might be the cheapest way (and possibly only way) to very high production (probably one or two cities max), the likes you need for wonder spam or space program.
That said, I agree with the Chinese that pop 10 is roughly ideal pop size for general utility cities, at which point you're better off starting a new city.

It also highlights how powerful Magnus-powered food harvesting, floodplains and generally speaking food-positive tiles are.

And I wondered why it takes 21 turns with a fully powered industrial zones to produce industrial-era wonders...

 

[Victoria]

And I wondered why it takes 21 turns with a fully powered industrial zones to produce industrial-era wonders...

10 production from your IZ vs 200-400 production from a chop? There is just no real choice there.
If you have trees you will get wonders, if you do not you will have to compete over turns for a wonder and possibly lose 50% of your production. The game is all about planning what wonders you need and saving trees.
Using IZ’s instead of theatres, campus, CZ/harbour is immersive rather than practical in many but not all cases.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

• Being able to afford an Industrial Zone in addition to the "real" districts is one of the reasons to grow a few cities to high population.
• Governors are another. Both Reyna and Pingala have per-population bonuses which should encourage you to grow at least 2 cities if you decide to use them for more than their starting ability.
• Finally, we have specialists. They have been ruled as useless since the early days of Civ6 because they don't provide GP points but Culture, Science and Faith are yields not easily available on the map for which specialists can be useful. Big cities are those that can afford specialists without sacrificing too much growth or production.

With those things considered, a big city will always be better than a small one as long as you can provide the amenities it needs. Why are big cities considered useless then (at least by good SP players) ? I think it's due to a pair of factors :

• The game is basically over long before you can have big cities, not because they grow too slowly but because good players at good at breaking game mechanisms and finishing the game long before the developers intended for a game to be over while the developers are bad at finding game mechanisms that can't be broken by good players (look at the GS pillage fiasco that all of the best players on this forum had predicted).
• Even after numerous AI improvements it's still too easy to invade an AI and take it's cities, making expansion virtually unlimited. Why bother grow a city which could afford specialists for +6 science when you can take a city from the AI and place an additional campus for at least +14 science (if it's not already there)

 

[Tabarnak]

The game is basically over long before you can have big cities, not because they grow too slowly but because good players at good at breaking game mechanisms and finishing the game long before the developers intended for a game to be over while the developers are bad at finding game mechanisms that can't be broken by good players (look at the GS pillage fiasco that all of the best players on this forum had predicted).

They struggle at finding balance between op strats and the casual players. They should counsider finding ways to slow down the game so best players cannot finish the game before 200-210 turns(standard speed), like it is for civ5 BTS.

A good way is to boost a bit more the tall empires. And punish a bit more the huge empires. AI needs a complete overhull as well(please make them use the fortify option! So important!).

I would like to see a kind of corruption mechanic. Maybe a return of courthouses too.

 

[megabearsfan]

They struggle at finding balance between op strats and the casual players. They should counsider finding ways to slow down the game so best players cannot finish the game before 200-210 turns(standard speed), like it is for civ5 BTS.

I've recommended in the past that perhaps higher difficulty settings should nerf the player, rather than speed up the A.I.s. Seeing an A.I. English caravel at your borders in 600 B.C. has always been a pet peeve of mine.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

They struggle at finding balance between op strats and the casual players. They should counsider finding ways to slow down the game so best players cannot finish the game before 200-210 turns(standard speed), like it is for civ5 BTS.

A good way is to boost a bit more the tall empires. And punish a bit more the huge empires. AI needs a complete overhull as well(please make them use the fortify option! So important!).

I would like to see a kind of corruption mechanic. Maybe a return of courthouses too.

The lack of a "rubber band mechanism" definitely doesn't help. They might have pushed too far in civ5 but the civ 4 corruption was indeed pretty good.

I've recommended in the past that perhaps higher difficulty settings should nerf the player, rather than speed up the A.I.s. Seeing an A.I. English caravel at your borders in 600 B.C. has always been a pet peeve of mine.

That's so true
Speeding up the AI makes the game harder for the casual players but actually offers more to the op starts that rely on exploiting AI weaknesses to speed up your game. More gold to purchase your resources, more and better cities to capture once you manage to beat them on the military front (purely by exploiting the AIs stupidity as you simply can't beat an opponent with 3 times as many units in a "fair" fight). More stuff to pillage for free gold (and previously culture and science).
Fast games (especially on Deity) revolves around turning AI advantage into player advantage so why give even more advantages?

Free starting settlers are so 1991

 

[megabearsfan]

That's so true
Speeding up the AI makes the game harder for the casual players but actually offers more to the op starts that rely on exploiting AI weaknesses to speed up your game. More gold to purchase your resources, more and better cities to capture once you manage to beat them on the military front (purely by exploiting the AIs stupidity as you simply can't beat an opponent with 3 times as many units in a "fair" fight). More stuff to pillage for free gold (and previously culture and science).
Fast games (especially on Deity) revolves around turning AI advantage into player advantage so why give even more advantages?

Free starting settlers are so 1991

Indeed. The free starting settlers are perhaps my single, biggest frustration with Immortal and Diety difficulties, and peeves me to the point that I just don't enjoy playing those difficulties. I stick to Emperor. I wrote a pair of blogs a while back outlining my frustrations with the way that Civ has traditionally handled difficulty levels : http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2017/06/03/Frustrations-with-Civ-difficulty-levels.aspx
And we also talked about it in an episode of PolyCast, though I don't remember the episode number.

In summary, I hate how the game front-loads all the extra challenge (which I just find to be frustratingly unfair, rather than a fun challenge to overcome); rather than providing escalating challenge as the game goes on. Once you turn the A.I.'s starting advantages into YOUR advantages, and you catch up to them, the game is so totally over, but you've still got 100-200 turns before a victory screen.

 

[kb27787]

Okay, I started on the spreadsheet and I linked it into the OP.

Looking at these numbers, food might be the cheapest way (and possibly only way) to very high production (probably one or two cities max), the likes you need for wonder spam or space program.
That said, I agree with the Chinese that pop 10 is roughly ideal pop size for general utility cities, at which point you're better off starting a new city.

It also highlights how powerful Magnus-powered food harvesting, floodplains and generally speaking food-positive tiles are.

And I wondered why it takes 21 turns with a fully powered industrial zones to produce industrial-era wonders...

Well... there is an exception (yes, generally hard-building wonders are bad); same as back in BNW once a city hits a certain size threshold and has enough production in the terrain you can hard-build those wonders in 8 turns or so. In fact back in civ V growing such cities was pretty much mandatory to win on deity. Your spreadsheet seems to only stop at size 20.

You run out of woods quite quickly (esp. with Magnus nerf) if you play like me (since ancient/early era wonders are so darned useful) but if we have a size 30-40+ city (doable within reasonable time before you actually win, aka world industrial era or early modern at the latest, only with Kongo or Cree really) with Ruhr (rushed out) and lots of mines then yes, I hard-build Maracana in 6-8 turns. I only build one IZ (if I have an Oracle city); main purpose is the GE points for those +wonder production GE (the only reason to get IZ, really) which you can think of as several "free" stone/deer to be used without worker charges in any city you like.