My biggest grief thus far (Science VS Production)

[Celevin]

Is the amount of time it takes to research a tech compared to building a unit, or building.

I feel like even when I specifically go for more production, I can still research 1-2 techs before I finish a stupid granary. I'm always pressed on what to build. And god help me if someone declares war on me when I'm not ready, because it will take more than 20-30 turns on Epic to get up a single horseman to defend myself. Don't even consider Marathon speed, which I quickly switched away from after the medieval era. Quite frankly, it's not fun to build so little in one age.

I think this is caused by a few things:
1) Science is based on population, which isn't hard to come by. My city sizes are massive usually. Even without libraries I can get a new tech well before I can build a single building in a non-capitol city.
2) The culture of cities doesn't really go towards hills. Put hills on the same priority level as flatland, and I think we'd see a better game. I'm to the point where I'm buying a hill or two per city! Even then, it's not much of a production boost. A lot of the time I also find I have a lot of extra grassland tiles, because again, after resources this is priority #1 for a city.
3) Gold is supposed to be a way to help out production, but it's simply too expensive to buy units. Even managing a single city state's happiness is enough to take away most reserves.

Has anyone else found this to be a serious problem?

 

[EmperorFool]

I agree with your findings. While having fewer types of units makes this less noticeable, meaning your Swordsman and Archers are useful for longer than they were in Civ4 tech-wise, I find buildings take for-e-ver to construct. I suspect this is a matter of balancing because a) you don't want to build a lot of buildings since they cost to maintain and b) you can't really field a huge army for the same reason and because there's nowhere to put them on the map.

My guess is that our thinking about gold and expansion needs to change. First, don't expand so quickly. Unfortunately, I'm a builder at heart so expanding onto new areas of the map is what I love most. Second, maximize gold and use it to buy everything else. That's what I'm reading from others so far.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the easiest/right solution is to increase tech costs, rather than mess with production. But then, I thought tech discovery went too fast in vanilla Civ4.

 

[happyturtle]

I noticed the same thing in the two demo run throughs I did. I always had way more to build than I could possibly keep up with.

 

[alpaca]

Same here, it's even worse than in Civ4. I've already planned to make my personal mini-mod again that increases tech costs by lots (in Civ4, I increased early techs by a factor 3 or so and late game techs by a factor 10). Of course, you'll then need to adjust the timelines and such to compensate for the longer research times and nerf the other victories a bit by making social policies more expensive and conquest victory harder to achieve.

Some of this makes sense, though: You should choose well what to build in each city rather than building most things in every city (maintenance is also a consideration here).

 

[Dracil]

I feel like the game expects you to flat out buy stuff with all the money you easily accumulate

 

[SeptimusOctopus]

I agree with all three of your points so far (I've played ~4 hours on Prince level). I don't have too big of a problem with the production costs of buildings so much as I'm finding that I'm just able to finish things a few turns before I need them. That is to say that I'll finish a couple colosseums just before my population increases drive my civ into negative happiness. It would be nice to be able to crank out units more quickly if they're needed (I haven't been DoW'ed yet but I think that's more luck than skill).

To your second point, I find the auto-expanding culture to be too strongly biased toward flatland. I had one city that had a fish resource on it's third ring, and the city's governor simply would not ever consider getting a blank ocean tile en route to the fish. I would like to have a way to control which tiles are gained when the culture bucket fills. Hopefully the root of the problem is my own lack of experience with Civ5 rather than an actual flaw with the game design itself.

 

[King Jason]

I feel like the game expects you to flat out buy stuff with all the money you easily accumulate

Probably, but I feel the benefits of the city-states toss that option out of the window. The advantage of a maritime city-state is way better than a Granary even at just friendly.

 

[DalekDavros]

Probably, but I feel the benefits of the city-states toss that option out of the window. The advantage of a maritime city-state is way better than a Granary even at just friendly.

That's what I've found so far, as well. But I've been playing at lower levels to get a feel for things, and at those levels the AI doesn't seem interesting in city-state diplomacy. If that changes at high AI levels/in MP, city-state influence has the potential to become a dollar auction, which is bad for everyone involved.

 

[alpaca]

Probably, but I feel the benefits of the city-states toss that option out of the window. The advantage of a maritime city-state is way better than a Granary even at just friendly.

Does the maritime bonus work in the real game? Cos it doesn't in the demo

 

[Earthling]

Tech goes quite a bit too fast and production way too slow overall, I would agree with that. I think the devs didn't quite succeed at accounting for the lack of the huge production crutches in civ4 (forest chopping and slavery). And then of course we have the problem that the only solution to get more production is massive expansion of number of cities/territory, so you might as well do this from the start, contrary to what I think some intentions were.

(The costs of units versus buildings also isn't quite right. No point in having units way cheaper than buildings in hammers so "hey, you can build more units" when they are going to kill you in maintenance, so then the choice becomes expensive unit versus building)

 

[King Jason]

Does the maritime bonus work in the real game? Cos it doesn't in the demo

It sure does.

 

[Celevin]

And then of course we have the problem that the only solution to get more production is massive expansion of number of cities/territory, so you might as well do this from the start, contrary to what I think some intentions were.

Yeah, and this is going to open up even more.

If they do a general increase of production, happiness buildings are that much easier to get. The lack of being able to produce them at a decent rate is the only thing stopping me from mass-spamming cities.


I wouldn't be griping about this so much but I've actually tried to make production-only cities, and have still seen little return. It's bad enough that I think even for gold/science/culture focused cities, the best approach is to maximize production to actually build buildings at a normal rate, then switch them over.

Hammers are so very rare, and spamming cities is so good, that you can put the Iroquois right up next to India and France as the most powerful civs on my list.

 

[Gath]

Is the amount of time it takes to research a tech compared to building a unit, or building.

I feel like even when I specifically go for more production, I can still research 1-2 techs before I finish a stupid granary. I'm always pressed on what to build. And god help me if someone declares war on me when I'm not ready, because it will take more than 20-30 turns on Epic to get up a single horseman to defend myself. Don't even consider Marathon speed, which I quickly switched away from after the medieval era. Quite frankly, it's not fun to build so little in one age.

I think this is caused by a few things:
1) Science is based on population, which isn't hard to come by. My city sizes are massive usually. Even without libraries I can get a new tech well before I can build a single building in a non-capitol city.
2) The culture of cities doesn't really go towards hills. Put hills on the same priority level as flatland, and I think we'd see a better game. I'm to the point where I'm buying a hill or two per city! Even then, it's not much of a production boost. A lot of the time I also find I have a lot of extra grassland tiles, because again, after resources this is priority #1 for a city.
3) Gold is supposed to be a way to help out production, but it's simply too expensive to buy units. Even managing a single city state's happiness is enough to take away most reserves.

Has anyone else found this to be a serious problem?

I agree, so I generally focus one or two cities on units, the rest just become gold farms and wondermills. If I need something in a city, i'll just buy it. There's several social policies that help out with this.

 

[Thalassicus]

On Epic gamespeed, King difficulty I find the pace just right, I haven't ever been in a situation where I felt I couldn't keep production up to speed with research. Like in IV, you prioritize cities to be production, science, military, etc.

Keep in mind you need WAY fewer units now. Cities basically start with two units inside them. It's also harder to lose units in combat -- battles typically end before either unit dies, and you can rotate out weakened units from the front lines. Basic ranged units also have no chance of dying when attacking.

Don't need as many workers either.

As a result of all this, I've found it easy to go much of the game with just a single military city, all the rest free to focus on buildings. I only have 4-5 workers.

 

[jaycuhbbb]

There's a few problems.
1.) NO WHIP!!!!! This was the way most early cities constructed their infra in 4...
2.) Less food. The specials are VERY VERY weak compared to civ4, so you need to put more citizens on food tiles. Also, mines for some reason reduce food on a tile??
3.) Less production. Tiles are garbage compared to 4... Specialists are going to rule this game.

 

[Fabien]

I've had the same problems so far, but then I played my first Civ V game like Civ4 with 1UPT . I guess I'll have to adjust - it no longer makes that much sense to have multiple really big cities with the same size. I guess I'll have to plan more and go for some smaller cities with no buildings at all.

I also managed to nearly kill myself by building too many farms (i.e. I tried to reproduce a specialist economy). Well, everyone became very angry at some point and there was no turning back.

 

[remconius]

I tend to agree and I am thinking that gold farming and buying is more powerful than producing yourself.

Actually last night I built the pyramids in 27 turns and some other building in 20 (library?). There is something wrong there. I probably changed the focus of worker, but it doesnt feel right yet. I would not be surprised if a gold driven economy is the way to go. Gold for trade, city states, tiles, buidings and units....

To be tested!

 

[Wulf38]

Speaking of hammers, why do engineer specialists only provide one measly hammer? Sure they give you great engineer points, but if you're just trying to get more hammers in a city, they're no better than unemployed citizens! I could work an unimproved plains tile instead and get 1 hammer and 1 food.

 

[QuixotesGhost]

Has anyone tried climbing Piety and spamming golden ages? That's what I did my first game and was definately not hard up for hammers.