March Patch Notes (formerly february)

[Martin Alvito]

siam got an indirect nerf b/c universities are now 2 GS's instead of one.

The ability to bypass the Library entirely remains extremely powerful, as does the UA. If the University still only had one slot, Siam would still be the runaway winner.

 

[_hero_]

Ultimately, happiness is something that doesn't even make sense in any of the Civ games IMO. Unhappiness has always been correlated to population. In real life, civil unrest has nothing to do with population.

As for economics, the Civ IV model was very unrealistic. Gold (tax revenue?), Science, and Luxury should not be fighting against each other. In fact they should be reinforcing. A stronger economic base means more "gold" which in turn means more excess with which to divert resources into scientific research and providing/purchasing luxuries. Greater scientific research leads to economic developments which in turn lead to more gold and better luxuries. The slider model was bad and I'm glad it's gone. I just don't feel like happiness was a good replacement.

Economic growth is in reality, a function of capital equipment and advancement, education, and finally, the least important, population. As such, the buildings which make up a city need to themselves have increasing modifiers as the city grows. After all, a factory with 10,000 workers can streamline things and benefit you greater than one with 100 workers.

I propose that in order to fix the "tall vs wide" issue, Civ needs to reflect this. Big cities need to gain a greater percentage boost from their buildings than small cities do. This won't eliminate wide as a strategy, it will just create a much stronger incentive to grow your cities. I also think this needs to be non-linear. For instance, say a factory gives a size 1 city +25% production. Maybe a size 2 city it's 26%. Size 3, 28% size 4 32%. Obviously the math would need to be toyed with, but the point is, players should be rewarded for growing cities into Tokyo's or NYCs or Chicago's. Big cities end up making up such a vast amount of a countries economy, culture, science, etc. Civ has never properly reflected just how important these mega-cities are in the real world.

Additionally, the civ growth model needs to be reworked. The way it currently is, growing reduces the rate at which cities grow in most cases. In reality, what attracts population to an area is not the availability of land. It's the availability of opportunity. I feel like employment and migration need to be a part of the next Civ. Adding buildings to a city should automatically attract labor. Adding luxuries should as well. In this manner, "wide" empires will lag behind if there is no appropriate focus on infrastructure.

It's not about using some cheesy model like happiness or city maintenance. Just look at what actually happens in the real world and you'll have your answer.

 

[Ddude97]

Ultimately, happiness is something that doesn't even make sense in any of the Civ games IMO. Unhappiness has always been correlated to population. In real life, civil unrest has nothing to do with population.

As for economics, the Civ IV model was very unrealistic. Gold (tax revenue?), Science, and Luxury should not be fighting against each other. In fact they should be reinforcing. A stronger economic base means more "gold" which in turn means more excess with which to divert resources into scientific research and providing/purchasing luxuries. Greater scientific research leads to economic developments which in turn lead to more gold and better luxuries. The slider model was bad and I'm glad it's gone. I just don't feel like happiness was a good replacement.

Economic growth is in reality, a function of capital equipment and advancement, education, and finally, the least important, population. As such, the buildings which make up a city need to themselves have increasing modifiers as the city grows. After all, a factory with 10,000 workers can streamline things and benefit you greater than one with 100 workers.

I propose that in order to fix the "tall vs wide" issue, Civ needs to reflect this. Big cities need to gain a greater percentage boost from their buildings than small cities do. This won't eliminate wide as a strategy, it will just create a much stronger incentive to grow your cities.

Additionally, the civ growth model needs to be reworked. The way it currently is, growing reduces the rate at which cities grow in most cases. In reality, what attracts population to an area is not the availability of land. It's the availability of opportunity. I feel like employment and migration need to be a part of the next Civ. Adding buildings to a city should automatically attract labor. Adding luxuries should as well. In this manner, "wide" empires will lag behind if there is no appropriate focus on infrastructure.

It's not about using some cheesy model like happiness or city maintenance. Just look at what actually happens in the real world and you'll have your answer.

I like these ideas, though the growth issue to preven tedious MM I think should be kept roughly the same (maybe allowing faster growth at larger size through a building or something)

 

[_hero_]

I like these ideas, though the growth issue to preven tedious MM I think should be kept roughly the same (maybe allowing faster growth at larger size through a building or something)

Well, I think at the core, there's this flaw that, at least in the 20th century and onward, food is no longer some derivative of locally grown products. A cities "tiles" are no longer the main thing after cars and airplanes and refrigeration come into play.

In Civ 2 (I think) you could have your freight permanently add food from one city to another. This system was poorly designed, but I do feel like some level of import/export needs to come into play with food. In fact, as civilizations advance, it should become an increasingly large part of the economy. I've yet to think of a good way to handle it though.

 

[SpearMan153]

You've got to love how a thread on the latest patch notes turns into a spirited debate about the pros/cons of civ4 style maintenance and local happiness vs civ5 style global happiness

So in the tradition of off topic debate - here I go, once more into the fray

Both systems have their flaws and neither system is what I'd call "realistic". Realism is not something I've ever associated with a civ game. In civ the game mechanics are always so abstract that for any given mechanic I can come of with both justification for it and a reason why its completely unrealistic at the same time. But maybe that's just me...

So I'll stick to game mechanic arguments.

In civ4 you have city maintenance as the main wide empire/number of city limiter, with local happiness as the main growth/raw population limiter. The city maintenance will punish you (quite severely at times) if you expand too early - ie prior to courthouses/markets/+1 trade routes. After that initial speed bump you can quite happily invade and annex the entire world without much constraint (not something I've found possible in civ5 btw).

In civ5 you have global happiness instead, the primary purpose of the mechanic is as an empire growth limiter (total population not so much number of cities) - the number of city limiter is secondary. Additional cities do initially cost you extra unhappiness but these costs can be largely (but not entirely) overcome with social policies + forbidden palace wonder. This however incurs an opportunity cost via both increased social policy costs and choosing the more ICS friendly policies over others.

In an ICS game (as I understand it) you need to artificially limit your population size in your non-core cities so you don't waste your happiness. This means that the mechanic is actually doing its primary job - limit raw population (and indirectly science output).

In civ5 in a normal play game I will often (due to conquests for rapid expansion) find myself with happiness problems forcing me to slow down. This happens to a degree that never happened to me in my civ4 games. More often then not I mitigate this by going down the Piety SP line to take theocracy costing me 3 SP that could have gone into say rationalism for science.

I prefer the global happiness model as I believe it is a base design that is very adaptable and allows more interesting game options to be added then a local based system. It is a much more extensible design, you can add all sorts of cool effects and trade-offs based on rewarding excess happiness, punishing excess unhappiness with interesting interaction with the SP system (like bonus culture, bonus science for excess happiness). As a raw population limiter I find it works better then local happiness system (in civ4 between luxuries, multiple religion buildings and culture slider the local happiness cap is entirely mitigated) and is about the same as a wide empire limiter (early limiter only).

I think where civ5 breaks down is through overpowered great scientists and research agreements, which breaks the science equals population potential times science infrastructure design. Hopefully increased science costs will fix this.

The issue is the interaction with mechanics outside of the global happiness mechanic that make ICS a viable/optimal option not the happiness mechanic itself.

The argument that civ5 global happiness model is broken/rubbish as it allows/encourages ICS is based on a couple of false assumptions.

#1 ICS is evil and must be destroyed at all costs

I personally don't have a problem if the system allows for an ICS style of play, as long as its not forced on you as the only viable game play option.. Its not a style of play that I enjoy (same goes for RA blocking) but if that's what others enjoy that's cool (the more styles of game play that are possible the better imo).

From what I've seen its not the dominate style of play for multiplayer (NC start is preferred I believe) so its clearly not the one optimal way to play ie it has weaknesses against thinking opponents. In single player no-one is forcing you to play in any particular way.

#2 that the primary design goal of a population growth/number of city limiter system is to prevent ICS

There are other design considerations at work where. To set "must not have ICS" up as the ONE primary over arching design goal is very one dimensional thinking.

#3 ICS is viable because of global happiness system

No its more to do with a combination of trade route income, city tile bonuses, per city bonuses, GS, RA abuse. All of which are balanceable: tweak the numbers to give high population city more advantages over the equivalent population in small cities.

There is nothing fundamentally broken about a global happiness system. As a design it is both reasonable and justifiable, and adds new and interesting game elements, tradeoffs and modding potential.

If you don't like the system that's cool - some people like anchovies, some don't.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

I propose that in order to fix the "tall vs wide" issue, Civ needs to reflect this. Big cities need to gain a greater percentage boost from their buildings than small cities do. This won't eliminate wide as a strategy, it will just create a much stronger incentive to grow your cities.

The controversy is not about what the Human can do, it's that the algorithmic AI's has the parametric incentives already coded and available to favor Compact rather than both Tall or Wide.

 

[Valkrionn]

You've got to love how a thread on the latest patch notes turns into a spirited debate about the pros/cons of civ4 style maintenance and local happiness vs civ5 style global happiness

So in the tradition of off topic debate - here I go, once more into the fray

Both systems have their flaws and neither system is what I'd call "realistic". Realism is not something I've ever associated with a civ game. In civ the game mechanics are always so abstract that for any given mechanic I can come of with both justification for it and a reason why its completely unrealistic at the same time. But maybe that's just me...

So I'll stick to game mechanic arguments.

In civ4 you have city maintenance as the main wide empire/number of city limiter, with local happiness as the main growth/raw population limiter. The city maintenance will punish you (quite severely at times) if you expand too early - ie prior to courthouses/markets/+1 trade routes. After that initial speed bump you can quite happily invade and annex the entire world without much constraint (not something I've found possible in civ5 btw).

In civ5 you have global happiness instead, the primary purpose of the mechanic is as an empire growth limiter (total population not so much number of cities) - the number of city limiter is secondary. Additional cities do initially cost you extra unhappiness but these costs can be largely (but not entirely) overcome with social policies + forbidden palace wonder. This however incurs an opportunity cost via both increased social policy costs and choosing the more ICS friendly policies over others.

In an ICS game (as I understand it) you need to artificially limit your population size in your non-core cities so you don't waste your happiness. This means that the mechanic is actually doing its primary job - limit raw population (and indirectly science output).

In civ5 in a normal play game I will often (due to conquests for rapid expansion) find myself with happiness problems forcing me to slow down. This happens to a degree that never happened to me in my civ4 games. More often then not I mitigate this by going down the Piety SP line to take theocracy costing me 3 SP that could have gone into say rationalism for science.

I prefer the global happiness model as I believe it is a base design that is very adaptable and allows more interesting game options to be added then a local based system. It is a much more extensible design, you can add all sorts of cool effects and trade-offs based on rewarding excess happiness, punishing excess unhappiness with interesting interaction with the SP system (like bonus culture, bonus science for excess happiness). As a raw population limiter I find it works better then local happiness system (in civ4 between luxuries, multiple religion buildings and culture slider the local happiness cap is entirely mitigated) and is about the same as a wide empire limiter (early limiter only).

I think where civ5 breaks down is through overpowered great scientists and research agreements, which breaks the science equals population potential times science infrastructure design. Hopefully increased science costs will fix this.

The issue is the interaction with mechanics outside of the global happiness mechanic that make ICS a viable/optimal option not the happiness mechanic itself.

The argument that civ5 global happiness model is broken/rubbish as it allows/encourages ICS is based on a couple of false assumptions.

#1 ICS is evil and must be destroyed at all costs

I personally don't have a problem if the system allows for an ICS style of play, as long as its not forced on you as the only viable game play option.. Its not a style of play that I enjoy (same goes for RA blocking) but if that's what others enjoy that's cool (the more styles of game play that are possible the better imo).

From what I've seen its not the dominate style of play for multiplayer (NC start is preferred I believe) so its clearly not the one optimal way to play ie it has weaknesses against thinking opponents. In single player no-one is forcing you to play in any particular way.

#2 that the primary design goal of a population growth/number of city limiter system is to prevent ICS

There are other design considerations at work where. To set "must not have ICS" up as the ONE primary over arching design goal is very one dimensional thinking.

#3 ICS is viable because of global happiness system

No its more to do with a combination of trade route income, city tile bonuses, per city bonuses, GS, RA abuse. All of which are balanceable: tweak the numbers to give high population city more advantages over the equivalent population in small cities.

There is nothing fundamentally broken about a global happiness system. As a design it is both reasonable and justifiable, and adds new and interesting game elements, tradeoffs and modding potential.

If you don't like the system that's cool - some people like anchovies, some don't.

I completely agree with your points.

Honestly, one of the easiest ways to 'kill' ICS would be for buildings to favor larger cities. Effects should scale with population. It's not terribly difficult to do, and immediately rewards larger cities over many small ones.

On the other hand, let's differentiate between ICS, and Wide, please. The first is uncontrolled expansion and should not be allowed; The second is a viable empire strategy and should be.

It is my belief that most of the "Tall vs Wide" argument misses the point entirely; It's not one or the other, the two are simply the extremes of a wide range of strategies. I've always favored a hybrid approach.

 

[_hero_]

The controversy is not about what the Human can do, it's that the algorithmic AI's has the parametric incentives already coded and available to favor Compact rather than both Tall or Wide.

Is it? All this talk from Sullla was about how the best strategy by elite players is always wide empires in Civ V. I didn't realize it was only about AI. My bad.

 

[_hero_]

I completely agree with your points.

Honestly, one of the easiest ways to 'kill' ICS would be for buildings to favor larger cities. Effects should scale with population. It's not terribly difficult to do, and immediately rewards larger cities over many small ones.

On the other hand, let's differentiate between ICS, and Wide, please. The first is uncontrolled expansion and should not be allowed; The second is a viable empire strategy and should be.

It is my belief that most of the "Tall vs Wide" argument misses the point entirely; It's not one or the other, the two are simply the extremes of a wide range of strategies. I've always favored a hybrid approach.

Good points. I don't think the goal of Firaxis is or should be to "kill" ICS or wide empires. It's simply to make Tall empires as powerful as wide. I just feel like their goal falls short when the incentives provided by big cities isn't enough to match the ones provided by small ones.

 

[_hero_]

If you don't like the system that's cool - some people like anchovies, some don't.

I don't really think it's that people don't like ICS as a strategy. It's just that the way the game is designed, it's the most effective strategy. This is mostly an issue because of elite players. They find the best strategy and simply can't force themselves to use something else. After all, it's a loser mentality, it's "weak" to do something inferior. That's fine. It's good to want Civ V to have a variety of viable options that are equal.

Now if multi-player worked better, and an elite player went around dominating all the other elite players with tall empires, all this talk would quickly fade. I think it's getting closer to being possible, but this last patch will fall a little short.

 

[Camikaze]

increased cost of settler, lowered initial city production, lowered trade income from smaller cities, much better "special" tile potential, all of these make city location much more important. Which just happens to be something that many of us have been clamoring for since launch.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for. City placement should be reasonably important. My point is that there's a difference between making city placement more important and making creating and developing new cities tedious.

 

[Grape Flavor]

Unfortunately I'm not sure that I'll ever trust Civ V at this point. Unless Sulla does few more runs and says "hey, this game is really good now!", I'll be very loath to buy.

I'm just not confident they can patch the suck out of Civ V. If I'm wrong, and they can, then what a shame that I'll probably never know.

Firaxis, you dun goofed.

 

[JohnnyW]

I don't really think it's that people don't like ICS as a strategy. It's just that the way the game is designed, it's the most effective strategy. This is mostly an issue because of elite players. They find the best strategy and simply can't force themselves to use something else. After all, it's a loser mentality, it's "weak" to do something inferior. That's fine. It's good to want Civ V to have a variety of viable options that are equal.

Just a note about this:

In a competitive setting if there is 1 clear dominant playstyle and you don't use it, your opponent will and will crush you. Doing anything less than the best strategy is at best a gamble and at worst a concession. Therefore it's not about "not forcing themselves to use something else," it's about winning and the best path to that goal. There isn't a counter-ICS strategy either.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just clarifying that the problem isn't with elite player mentality, but rather the actual mechanics.

 

[Valkrionn]

Good points. I don't think the goal of Firaxis is or should be to "kill" ICS or wide empires. It's simply to make Tall empires as powerful as wide. I just feel like their goal falls short when the incentives provided by big cities isn't enough to match the ones provided by small ones.

Like I said, I completely agree.

I think, given the changes in this patch, Tall has become more viable; Terrain is far more important in city placement, and many buildings are worth building now. This in and of itself doesn't make things completely equal, but it's far closer than it was on release; A good first step.

Still holding out for more effects scaled to city pop, and more reasons to want to hang onto excess happiness.

 

[JohnnyW]

Still holding out for more effects scaled to city pop, and more reasons to want to hang onto excess happiness.

Do you mean luxuries or the actual happiness to get GAs? I never understood the mechanic of 1 luxury = 5 , 99,999 of that same luxury = 5 btw. Instant reward is too big and there's no incentive for copy resources other than abusing AI incompetence and ridiculous bonuses. If they made it so the first luxury gives 3 and each thereafter gives 1 that'd make more sense to me personally and might give incentive not to sell luxuries.

Of course, you were probably talking about the actual happiness and not the luxuries. If so, there is that Piety SP that gives you culture for excess happiness.....probably not enough incentive for you though.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

It's simply to make Tall empires as powerful as wide. I just feel like their goal falls short when the incentives provided by big cities isn't enough to match the ones provided by small ones.

Let me put it all under different scope then.
You're playing SP or MP.
Your opponents can do whatever they want or are driven by a coded "Plan of specific choices" based on the most efficient (or obvious) way to beat YOU.

Sit tight and select what you think is the best "pattern" of decisions to defeat everybody... it may be Tall or Wide and everything else in-between under any given conditions presented to you.

Then and only then consider this...
The Human or AI opponents have the very same agenda as you do; Win.
In that specific case... Tall *and* Wide *and* Compact *and* everything else will certainly happen against YOU.
While every composition probabilities frozen under procedural calls lean towards Compacting priorities for the AIs no matter how hard you try modifying the ruleset values & conditional results of such behavior.

The entire model is basicly designed to favor direct Happiness advantages (supplemental, btw) *TO* the player (Human *and* AIs) choosing a tight grid of cities such as an ICS.

And this is the most important point; while having (progressively) Big *OR* Small cities in any given quantity within any given spread even when Happiness, Winning or Losing decisions aren't enforced by the ruleset.

 

[Valkrionn]

Do you mean luxuries or the actual happiness to get GAs? I never understood the mechanic of 1 luxury = 5 , 99,999 of that same luxury = 5 btw. Instant reward is too big and there's no incentive for copy resources other than abusing AI incompetence and ridiculous bonuses. If they made it so the first luxury gives 3 and each thereafter gives 1 that'd make more sense to me personally and might give incentive not to sell luxuries.

Of course, you were probably talking about the actual happiness and not the luxuries. If so, there is that Piety SP that gives you culture for excess happiness.....probably not enough incentive for you though.

Well, I meant the actual happiness. I feel that happiness (whether positive or negative) should have a few smooth effects; As it stands, it's all plateau effects. 1 is equivalent to 9 , and that's just not cutting it; I want some effects that increment with each and every point of happiness.

But on the luxuries... I completely agree and have had a modcomp written for some time (few weeks before the last patch, I think? Can't remember) that adds capabilities along the lines of what you said... Great minds think alike.

Basically, I added a new xml tag, ExtraHappiness (unoriginal name, so sue me ), and set it up to accept Float values (important). Each turn, if you have any resource with this set (even a non-luxury!), you gain happiness equal to (NumResource - 1) * ExtraHappiness.

Basically, every extra instance of a resource you have can provide happiness. Displayed accurately in the interface as well.

The exact values I went with are very close to what you said... +3 per type of luxury, +0.5 per instance. I initially playtested with 3/1, but 3/0.5 felt better when playing. Then again, it was before the december patch.


Unfortunately, never released it, aside from in a private group. Meant to, but never updated Economy Mod (and likely won't, too busy with RifE). I'll be updating it (and Dark Ages, quite likely bundling them together) for the new patch and releasing as modcomps, other modders can use them as they wish.

 

[_hero_]

Just a note about this:

In a competitive setting if there is 1 clear dominant playstyle and you don't use it, your opponent will and will crush you. Doing anything less than the best strategy is at best a gamble and at worst a concession. Therefore it's not about "not forcing themselves to use something else," it's about winning and the best path to that goal. There isn't a counter-ICS strategy either.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just clarifying that the problem isn't with elite player mentality, but rather the actual mechanics.

Oh I agree 100% in multiplayer. I was more talking about the singleplayer. Diety can be won without truly ICSing. But the elite players who talk on here have proven that ICS is still by far the best way to win against the AI.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Happiness from extra resources will benefit ICS more, because with ICS you will have more resources due to your city spam, plus this will release the pressure from limited happiness on ICS.

Actually the ExtraHappiness is implemented in the game at Settler and Chieftain levels, go check yourself and play a settler game you will notice that you receive +1 extra happiness per resource count. the developers removed this at mid and high difficulties to make the game harder.

I dont think it is necessary to add benefit from extra resource because the benifit is there from trade and from the Resources Tiles yields.

The Reward from Extra Happiness is there where +1 Happ is not same as +30 happiness , because happiness contributes to Golden ages, what we need is more penalty on Unhappiness, to make unhappiness hurts ICs more a penalty on Research is a must. Research penalty will cut ICS advantage and we will go back to Civ4 careful and step-by-step expansion !

 

[Valkrionn]

Happiness from extra resources will benefit ICS more, because with ICS you will have more resources due to your city spam, plus this will release the pressure from limited happiness on ICS.

Actually the ExtraHappiness is implemented in the game at Settler and Chieftain levels, go check yourself and play a settler game you will notice that you receive +1 extra happiness per resource count. the developers removed this at mid and high difficulties to make the game harder.

I dont think it is necessary to add benefit from extra resource because the benifit is there from trade and from the Resources Tiles yields.

The Reward from Extra Happiness is there where +1 Happ is not same as +30 happiness , because happiness contributes to Golden ages, what we need is more penalty on Unhappiness, to make unhappiness hurts ICs more a penalty on Research is a must. Research penalty will cut ICS advantage and we will go back to Civ4 careful and step-by-step expansion !

I did not know that that existed on low difficulties... Hmm. May have to check how they did that then, could be that the happiness modcomp isn't needed at all.

It's a bit of a mixed bag for me; It helps tall early on (given the way capitals tend to have several of a specific luxury nearby, for trading purposes), but ends up helping Wide more in the long run, yes. It was developed alongside Dale's happiness mod, where happy buildings contributed %, rather than flat amounts, so that's something to keep in mind. On it's own... Eh. I don't know if I would use it or not. More rational than a flat benefit, but has the potential to unbalance the game.

The other modcomp I have, Dark Ages, is more immediately beneficial on it's own right; Accumulate too much unhappiness (initially, build up to 500 unhappy, cut by 50 for each Dark Age rather than increased like GAs), and you are thrown into ten turns of anarchy. No research, no production, no gold generation. Complete stagnation. That said, it should be used alongside more incremental effects, as it ultimately represents just another plateau effect.