Limits to expansion?

[Nixalo]

I'd rather have a useless city in my hands than in the hands of an opponent. I don't think the city being useless is in itself a deterrent. That's why there needs to be maintenance or something associated with it. Then we have to decide whether it's worth settling the city or not. If there isn't anything negative associated with settling it, why not settle it?

No one knows yet the drag a useless city has on a Civ. It might be better to grow a city to take half those tiles instead of splitting the land into 2 cities. Amenities needs might be exponential with city number. Tech cost might grow with city number.

 

[manu-fan]

I think it is likely that they will do a tech and culture cost increase per city penalty like in V but we know the happines system have been changed and that do mean alot.

The importance is that the system is relevant both in the early and late game.

Yeah, those are the only things I can think of that will limit you. Tech and Culture costs of stuff.

 

[stroypa]

It's possible the AI could be a limit. As in, if you expand too rapidly and get too large relative to the others, the other civs and even city states will start not liking you and then eventually they'll declare war together. So it kind of works like Infamy in Paradox games.

 

[LAnkou]

Of all the post i've read, there are 2 things that i note in particulary:

- you should be able to expand more or less rapidly
- there's a need of a penalty to prevent full expansion as the only strategy, especially in the early game

From my own experience, i would add something:
- a city should be able to pay for itself someday:

The problem with civ V and the current science penalty is that it is too hard for a new city to pay for itself sciencewise. Imagine if the penalty were a fixed science cost (increasing with the eras and/or the number of cities) for any new city ? with the good balance (- 3 beakers for 20 turns ? -60 beakers in one shot ?), it may be interesting to invest in a new city while REX/ICS would mean a sufficiently huge delay in research to not be that interesting


Today, there is already a production cost (the settler + the protecting unit), the maintenance in Civ IV was a gold cost. What may be nice would be the fact that you would put a choice over the payment type: Gold, science, Culture, Faith
A new city would cost X gold or X beakers, X culture or X faith. You would choose which one you use, some policies and religion trait would have bonuses/maluses on settler cost (maritime trading would give - 5% on cost for coastal cities, religious diaspora would give -10% on payment with faith...)

I'm sure it won't be this system, but they can use it for Civ VII in 2020. The idea is free of charge

 

[Seek]

@LAnkou
Agreed that civ5 punished expansion far too heavily. Not only is there a science cost, there is a culture cost, a food cost (both via happiness and settler production), and a gold cost (building maintenance, which is one of the main reasons Liberty isn't so viable). If you can keep all that in check then wide empire cities will eventually pay for themselves, but sheesh, those are a lot of yields to give up!

 

[Stalker0]

I think Civ IVs system was overall pretty good. It didn't stop you from expanding quickly initially...but it forced expansion to be done in "waves". You would put down some cities, had to let them grow to start actually being a net bonus, and then you could start another wave. Of course by then other civs would often by filling in next to you, and borders started being a deterrent.

Ultimately Civ 5 made a new cities penalty both global and "permanent"...that was the problem. Ultimately I think

 

[mudblood]

I'm sure there will be some mechanics that put limits on wide empires, probably a "tax" of some kind.

I forget in which video, but somewhere in the most recent batch someone suggested that you might not be able to bombard from a city until you build city walls. Not sure if that's the case, but if it's right, that might make newly established cities a lot weaker and require a much bigger investment in terms of protecting them with troops, etc.

Seems like there might be similar limits because of caravans only being able to build roads in the early game (much harder to move troops to protect a newly established city if it doesn't have a road leading to it), and maybe with the builder mechanic?

I'd prefer those kinds of gameplay limitation rather than a simple "tax" on wide empires.

 

[Heinage]

Let's look at it from a perspective of big vs. small empires in the real world.

There are a few things that come to mind for me which could easily be gamified:
- cost of governance
- stability
- defensibility

Breaking these down:

Cost of governance. Managing a widely spread out empire should cost more, in terms of governance, than a compact one. This can easily be implemented in the same fashion as Civ IV civic cost. Then it becomes a matter of finding the right balance so that depending on the situation, it's not set in stone that a wide empire is always going to have less gold than a tall empire.

Stability: this could be in the form of game mechanic simply called "stability". If you go wide, the cost of managing your empire's stability increases. If you do this successfully, well done! You get the associated bonuses of being large (extra resources, bigger potential production capacity etc.). If you don't manage it well, a tall empire can outperform you because they are less restricted by worrying about stability and can focus their efforts on creating more efficient cities.

Defensibility: this is the easiest and happens naturally. Having a wider empire is inherently more difficult to defend because you have more land to worry about, need a larger army (with its associated upkeep), and causes diplomatic friction with neighbours who feel threatened/squeezed in.

I'd like to see these kinds of mechanics because they are situational and give players the choice to manage expansion or fail in their attempt to do so. Bad decisions about expansion leads to bad consequences.

EDIT: and there is a cost to (rapid) expansion in that you have to pour resources into maintaining your stability while going tall lets you focus your efforts in other areas (such as wonder building or more efficient research/faith/gold generation)

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[Stalker0]

Let's look at it from a perspective of big vs. small empires in the real world.

There are a few things that come to mind for me which could easily be gamified:
- cost of governance
- stability
- defensibility

Breaking these down:

Cost of governance. Managing a widely spread out empire should cost more, in terms of governance, than a compact one. This can easily be implemented in the same fashion as Civ IV civic cost. Then it becomes a matter of finding the right balance so that depending on the situation, it's not set in stone that a wide empire is always going to have less gold than a tall empire.

Stability: this could be in the form of game mechanic simply called "stability". If you go wide, the cost of managing your empire's stability increases. If you do this successfully, well done! You get the associated bonuses of being large (extra resources, bigger potential production capacity etc.). If you don't manage it well, a tall empire can outperform you because they are less restricted by worrying about stability and can focus their efforts on creating more efficient cities.

Defensibility: this is the easiest and happens naturally. Having a wider empire is inherently more difficult to defend because you have more land to worry about, need a larger army (with its associated upkeep), and causes diplomatic friction with neighbours who feel threatened/squeezed in.

I'd like to see these kinds of mechanics because they are situational and give players the choice to manage expansion or fail in their attempt to do so. Bad decisions about expansion leads to bad consequences.

EDIT: and there is a cost to (rapid) expansion in that you have to pour resources into maintaining your stability while going tall lets you focus your efforts in other areas (such as wonder building or more efficient research/faith/gold generation)

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One other real world factor I've never really seen a 4x game utilize. Ultimately the problem is that expanding gets you the biggest civ, and the biggest civ tends to win and steamroll over smaller ones...and just gets stronger and stronger.

In the real world, when we look at a Rome or the British Empire...ultimately internal corruption did them in. Civs get "lazy" when they are top of the food chain for so long.

Basically....you could have a mechanic where corruption increases the longer your Civ is "at the top" which gives other civs a chance to catch up.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

One other real world factor I've never really seen a 4x game utilize. Ultimately the problem is that expanding gets you the biggest civ, and the biggest civ tends to win and steamroll over smaller ones...and just gets stronger and stronger.

In the real world, when we look at a Rome or the British Empire...ultimately internal corruption did them in. Civs get "lazy" when they are top of the food chain for so long.

Basically....you could have a mechanic where corruption increases the longer your Civ is "at the top" which gives other civs a chance to catch up.

I would only want a system like this as long as the civics/government/policy cards have a cost-benefit solution to fight corruption (which was in Civ 5, courthouses kinda). That way the player doesn't feel penalized for arguably doing great at the early game/war aspects of the game.

 

[Heinage]

Yes, the stability mechanic I was talking about could essentially encapsulate corruption. As in, corruption leads to internal instability. As noted above, large empires tend to start crumbling from the inside, so stopping this from happening requires good management and certain costs that smaller empires don't incur.

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[Leathaface]

I just noticed, in the Civ VI gameplay released this week (China, USA and Egypt) that China has 2 cities by turn 35. Matter of fact both cities (Xi'an and Shenyang) had 4 population.

I don't know, but maybe this is a hint from Firaxis that playing wide is very viable?

 

[Heinage]

In terms of game mechanics we already know about: the government / civic cards system, there is potential for already addressing the expansion issue.

For example, an early wide empire may need to go with a form of government that sacrifices economy for military. I.e. They choose a system which gives them 2 military and 1 economic civic. If they choose Republic (2 economic civics, no military civic?), they could find themselves in difficulty dealing with defending a wide empire.
On the flipside, a tall empire can focus on growing their economy and cities and research because they can, with greater confidence, choose the government and civics that allow them to place greater emphasis on these aspects of the game.

Just spitballing here...

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[Callonia]

I dislike the corruption mechanic from civ3. All it did was encourage me to raze every single city once corruption reached a point where each new city became eternally useless. If I didn't raze it, I just put them onto wealth and forgot about their existence for the sake of turning entire map into my color.

If it returns in civ6. Well, not even districts will be enough to make me suffer through boring corruption model again.

 

[Lucius_]

I dislike the corruption mechanic from civ3. All it did was encourage me to raze every single city once corruption reached a point where each new city became eternally useless. If I didn't raze it, I just put them onto wealth and forgot about their existence for the sake of turning entire map into my color.

If it returns in civ6. Well, not even districts will be enough to make me suffer through boring corruption model again.

I had that issue as well for a long time, but I learned how to reduce corruption and make far off conquered cities productive. A combination of the Forbidden Palace and achieving ILTKD would turn huge corrupt conquered foreign cities into a core city capable of cranking out military units closer to the front lines.

To be on topic, I wouldn't mind the corruption mechanic coming back, as long as there is an effective way of reducing it and making cities productive, even if it's only really possible to do for a few core cities.

 

[toft]

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[Novu]

It almost sounds like Civ6 is going to bring back the dreaded "Smallpox." LOL not really though...


Historically the biggest limiting factor to wide empires was logistics. Before modern communications and travel it took a long time to move things around the empire. Populations that were far away from their ruler tended to get restless and would eventually revolt especially in occupied lands. A distant population would realize they could revolt and there would be nothing the rulers far away could do about it. Even if the people were locally happy some agitator would come a long and try to break the city away from the empire. Wide empires tended to cleave themselves in half. See the Roman empire dividing itself half to become Eastern and Western Empires. Or America breaking off from English just because they could they could get away with it.

What there should be is some type of Charisma factor in the game that holds empires together. The further away a city is from the leader the lower the Charisma. The leader itself could even be a unit that the player and AI can move around to deal with Charisma issues. However, I doubt they will go that route.

 

[historix69]

One other real world factor I've never really seen a 4x game utilize. Ultimately the problem is that expanding gets you the biggest civ, and the biggest civ tends to win and steamroll over smaller ones...and just gets stronger and stronger.

In the real world, when we look at a Rome or the British Empire...ultimately internal corruption did them in. Civs get "lazy" when they are top of the food chain for so long.

Basically....you could have a mechanic where corruption increases the longer your Civ is "at the top" which gives other civs a chance to catch up.

Empire stability depends a lot on ethnic, cultural, social and religious homogeneity. The British Empire had a very small base of true english population controlling up to a quarter of world population (ca. 450 M., about 10 times its own population) and a quarter of world land area. Possession of the Empire was only possible while the colonized people were behind in industrial and military technology and while the outer borders were secured by international alliances ... at the beginning of 20th century the allies had to be France and Russia, since UK would not be able to defend the border of the Empire against them in a war.

After 2 World Wars against Germany (and Japan in WW2), UK could no longer maintain the Empire.

Important question for Civ Game Design is which real states of the world should players be allowed to realize in a civ game and which they should not be allowed because they "spoil" the game.
Most extreme real states of the world in terms of land area, population, resources or industrial production are probably :
- Russia
- U.S.A.
- China
- India
- Canada
- Brasil
...

When playing with "realistic" rules, all these nations should be possible and (more or less) "stable" for a couple of centuries. When playing with "idealistic" rules (limited expansion), most of them should be instable or impossible.

Spoiler :

Countries_by_population_density :

Spoiler :

 

[stealth_nsk]

That may reward early conquest TOO much though.

I don't think that's too much. Early conquest is something people rarely consider, especially after cities learned to defend themselves. The amount of units required to take a city is big and you need to be pretty focused on this. Plus the conquered cities will be far away from your capitol, which is limit too.

The biggest thing I like here is - while this measure limits the early expansion, it don't interfere with late gameplay and wide/tall balance.

 

[Callonia]

I had that issue as well for a long time, but I learned how to reduce corruption and make far off conquered cities productive. A combination of the Forbidden Palace and achieving ILTKD would turn huge corrupt conquered foreign cities into a core city capable of cranking out military units closer to the front lines.

To be on topic, I wouldn't mind the corruption mechanic coming back, as long as there is an effective way of reducing it and making cities productive, even if it's only really possible to do for a few core cities.

I built the forbidden palace and such. It was completely pointless because there was still so many corrupt useless cities cuz I conquered the whole world. Which only made me hate corruption civ3 even more.

So I just abandoned civ3 in general and stuck to playing same few scenarios again and again until civ4 came out. I played that WW2 scenario in pacific so much..