Marathon mode and one city

[HoTT-NiXX]

Just curious if anyone has any idea of how the changes will affect a marathon mode game. Having a builder improve a tile in one turn seems like it might have some balancing issues outside of just taking longer to build the single unit. Also, any idea on a one city challenge. Given that we now have tiles being used as districts and those districts being limited to a number based on a population I think it could be extremely difficult to pull off on a higher difficulties.

 

[m15a]

We don't have any official information about marathon. I think builders taking 1 turn would be a balance issue on the level of units being able to move and explore relatively faster (moving 3x as far in the equivalent standard speed duration). Basically, it might affect balance but I'm guessing it'd just be a change in balance that is accepted as part of the game mode rather than something that needs to be fixed.

 

[Acken]

If both standard and Marathon build an improvement at 2000BC why would it be a problem ?

Where Marathon wins is on everything involving movements and combat. So if at 2000BC standard has to move 2 turns to make an improvement then Marathon would be "ahead" because those 2 turns cost less. But I don't see how that is different than previous civ.

 

[HoTT-NiXX]

I'm not seeing it as a problem. Was more curious what people are currently thinking when it comes to marathon and how the changes may affect it. I'm going to play marathon either way I as like long drawn out games in different eras. Main line of thinking was that in previous versions everything gets multiplied by X depending on the mod/time frame you selected whereas with an insta-improvement its a little different. Granted you could still purchase certain things to get an instant bonus but that was countered with the gold involved being multiplied also but with the workers instant creation things would probably change.

 

[qwerty25]

Out of all the changes to marathon. The builder will have one of the least I think. All of the time cost has been shifted back to the initial cost of building the builder rather than per tile.

The shift from standard to marathon will have a lot larger changes on unit combat movement

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[King Jason]

There are multiple solutions that solve this problem. The first one that comes to mind is to disproportionately raise the cost of builders in relation to everything else.

 

[Schuesseled]

There are multiple solutions that solve this problem. The first one that comes to mind is to disproportionately raise the cost of builders in relation to everything else.

They'll probably cost as much as a settler this time around, considering their more powerful abilities and the fact you won't need as many. (unless you want to continue expanding.)

 

[JtW]

It looks like the balancing will be done via the hammer cost of the builder. Honestly, it will be even more straightforward to balance than workers are, where you have to balance their hammer cost *and* the time it takes to build improvements. This time around, it will be simply "three improvements cost X hammers."

 

[Ryika]

Main line of thinking was that in previous versions everything gets multiplied by X depending on the mod/time frame you selected whereas with an insta-improvement its a little different.

No, it's not different. The formula used is the same, it's just that 0 * 300% stays 0.

That's totally in line with other mechanics. The one thing that workers from using up all of their charges literally instantaneous is that working on an improvement during a turn takes up the rest of your movement, so the actual number of turns required is of course 1, not 0.

That however, is once again perfectly in line with how the rest of Marathon works - abilities that "take up the rest of your turn" still just take up the rest of your turn, the number of turns is not multiplied with the Speed Modifier to make them wait for 3 turns on Marathon.

So overall, mechanically it fits perfectly into the rest of the Marathon Game Speed.

In terms of balance it's okay as well. Yes, you can put down 3 Improvements in almost no time, but that's it for the worker, it's gone. To get more Improvements you need to build a new Worker, which will once again takes the full 300% Production-Cost of Marathon. There's the scaling, in the production of new workers.

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About that workercost-discussion:
I don't see why they'd need to cost more than they cost in Civ 5. They no longer provide "infinite" value but are instead used up pretty quickly. In the preview footage build menu they now cost half of what Settlers cost, that may of course change in the future, but it gives us an idea where the devs want the cost to be.

And I think the costs are reasonable. In some ways you can think of workers as "buildings that are not unique but instead limited by your population and terrain." - If you use a worker to build 3 Farms then that worker basically produced a "+3 Food Building". That analogy does of course not work entirely, as you can build workers in other cities, have to defend all of those tiles, etc. - but it should give a hint about why the worker cost don't need to be pushed into extraordinary terrain, they're limited value.

And of course the devs probably want to encourage building workers for as many tiles as possible, because Improvements make your empire look good and provide decisions that need to be made. So overall, workers should be rather cheap.