My hyperexpansion test to show some faults.

[BlueGenie]

Hi all and welcome. I did a big test recently to show why city maintenances need to be kicked up a bunch of notches, that and also increasing teh MaxNumCity values drastically.

So, my test is using vanilla SVN version 7772, no changes at all, *sobs* and doing Play Now so only the standard default options set in C2C.
This did show me that a bunch of options I thougth were standard are not actually standard, and some I thought were not standard showed to be standard. This also threw my test off a bit but my main point is still valid anyway.

Standard size map, Random leader, eh, options as per sceenie1, ended up playing Shaka of the Zulu.

 

[BlueGenie]

I started slowly and found neighbours right away. Evertone on the same continent, as per the setup.

I decided that to expand later on I'd better take them out early, so proceeded to do so before reaching Tribalism.

 

[BlueGenie]

Tribalism. Tme to get my bases set up. But am busy at first and my first city still has not grown past pop 1. I wait a little, still fighting anyway.
Once ready I start my Golden Age with "Captured Fire" so I can do all those nifty Civic changes that are so important for that Tribalism/Chiefdom growth.

Once the base 4 cities are built, and those are incidentally the only cities I used for all Settlers and Archer units later on, I slowy expand up a bit more until I reach 8 cities and latitude enough to build Mammoth Trainer. Yay, can not take out the rest of the rabble on MY island (pangea, but still mine).
I keep Hatti's capital though, so 9 cities.

 

[BlueGenie]

Keep clearing the continent of any opposition to my expansion later on, getting a few slaves on the way.

Then I am suddenly set to start researching Writing and need that Golden Age to get all those next nice Civics coming up, and a few I skipped on tehw way so far because I did not need them yet.
My expansion start will commence once Golden Age and Civic Changes start. Oh, and there's a save right before that.

 

[BlueGenie]

Expansion started, first slowly, one settler at a time, then 2 at a time. Screenies are shoing the increases in City Maintanances along the way as well as Civic Changes and in the top left corner my income per turn.

Before starting my expansion I had around 175/turn

@+3 cities, 12, I have increased drastically in income due to more Civic changes while maintenances are not taht much higher. The MaxCity for Noble at 5 or 6 was reached long ago so each new city only gives minimal increase in maintanances anyway.

 

[BlueGenie]

Found a Quest bug while doing this. Just reached Classical and then I got this quest.
From teh screenie you can clearly see taht I am already IN Classical when I get it and taht if I reach classical age before completing it I fail.
Well, I did not fail, despite alredy being in Classical, so that Q might need to be fixed to start way, way, way, earlier than it does?

 

[BlueGenie]

Back to test, more Civic changes once I reach 20 cities, still going strongly at 300/turn in income at this point, +11 cities.
Golden Age getting near to it's end though.
By the time it ends I have still managed to get out 27 cities, or +18 cities in a row, and am still at 300+/turn.

But the minimal goal was +20 cities. So I keep going.

Save added a turn before GA ends.

 

[BlueGenie]

29 cities. Goal of "kicking out" 20 cities reached.

My 29th city still shows that income from it equals or surpasses the maintenance costs for it. This due to all the added buildings, housing and such, that C2C has autobuilt, each new city starts with a decent income.

This really means it is needed to increase the maintenance costs, and the MaxNumCities.

I was utterly wrong though, at least in this scenario, as I did not have to set a single sicy on Wealth at all to be able to both keep fighting and defending as well as expanding basically ad infinitum.

 

[BlueGenie]

I kept going, just to show that it was possible. By the time I stopped, bored mostly, I had 41 cities, each City with +29 "Our inept government's attempts to over-expand are making us unhappy", and still going +229/turn, still no cities on Wealth, and had not even really tried to get my income up.
All my new cities have all concentrated on first production and secondly on food. None have started on Science or Gold yet.

Total time played around 24 hours.

Save supplied as well.

I hope this shows my point adequately. If someone feels that this can only be done on slow speed like this I can do a similar test with custom options and Snail or faster speed on a Huge map, and most likely be able to duplicate it with ease as it showed to be easier to do it on Eons than it has been on Eternity for me.

My test for kicking out 20 cities ended up being 32 city spamming

 

[Thunderbrd]

Currently, on Immortal setting, Classical era, Snail speed, using slavery, won't bother discussing all civics but...

At 26 cities I'm forced down to about 65% research if I don't have about 5 cities building wealth.

My wife, same game (we're teamed) has about 22 cities at the moment and can run 100%. She's NOT on slavery (and our only civic difference is I've kept Matriarchy and she's gone on to Sovereignty) and at 100% she's getting less research than I am at 65% (same techs achieved since we're teamed.)

Yes, after a point it didn't seem like new cities were hurting me much but then again I've selected civics to reduce # of city maintenance. I was watching for the 'invisible wall' where you can get more cities and not see # of city maintenance rise though other forms of maintenance may and I don't know if I've hit that or not. But cities are able to produce a LOT of gold (and they are equally charged a LOT of gold too) so the system becomes very liquid and a player can find numerous ways to economically adapt so long as he's paying attention to doing so.

Maybe I build too many buildings that require major amounts of gold upkeep and that's why I can't get a natural 100% research going... I dunno.

But looking at your game I see a totally different approach to building cities (you were packing them in closely to each other) and I also have never seen in my games it being so possible to get that many cities so quickly without ruining the economy. Not sure how closely those two things are linked though.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I don't pack them quite as close but it is easier to expand when they are closer because reinforcements are not very far away.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Back to test, more Civic changes once I reach 20 cities, still going strongly at 300/turn in income at this point, +11 cities.
Golden Age getting near to it's end though.
By the time it ends I have still managed to get out 27 cities, or +18 cities in a row, and am still at 300+/turn.

But the minimal goal was +20 cities. So I keep going.

Save added a turn before GA ends.

Kudos on succeeding!

But!... not without Massive Aid in using Golden Ages (70 turns each time! wow!)and 900 turns out of 9000. Maintenance screens all skewed from being in GA. Do it Without GA crutch and an excessive amount of time, like say an Epic game speed where 900 turns is 1/3 of the game time.

JosEPh

 

[BlueGenie]

I give up. Seriously.

@T-Brd: Distance maintenance matters when you set cities closer, BUT only if having the same amount of cities. More cities should still be more maintenance even only counting Distance maintenance and not # at all.
26 cities spread out evenly from capital at DistanceCosts (0 being Capital) 0+2+2+2+3+3+3+3+3+3+4+4+4+4+5+5+5+5+5+5+5+6+6+6+6+6=102 cost more than 26 cities packed close at DistanceCosts 0+1+1+2+2+2+2+3+3+3+3+3+4+4+4+4+4+4+4+5+5+5+5+5+6+6=90 in the Distance Maintenance, but as you can see not by all that much BUT in the same are beig able to put in 7 more cities (that is a suggestion, not always the case, 25% more cities roughly) at 1+2+3+4+5+6+6=27 so 90+27=117 DistanceCost for same area.

Add in # for having 25% more cities and that should be a lot more but with the current system it would cut the # costs and only the Distance cost would be the determining factor.

As for increased Maintenance buildings, I built those too, not all, some are just too costly in my opinion (graveyards, mausolleums, yuck) or do not give a good enough benefit for even a small cost (streetlight buildings, roadsigns). Those that I feel are worth the cost I still build.

The test I did was to show that city maintenance needs adjusting as C2C is built up differently and the old BTS system jsut is not capable of handling the More is Better of C2C.
Spamming 20+ cities just should not be possible, except perhaps on Settler/Chieftain difficulties.


@DH
My point is not about defending. I did not need to defend much at all as I struck out and removed the neighbours anyway. The point was about being able to spam out 20+ cities and suffer NO monetary problems, at all.
Besides which I built a minimum of 1 archer and 1 Watchman for every new city so I did not forego my defenses. Mobile roaming Mammoth Riders, a bunch of Chariots, 15 Impi, and a Hero would have been enough to stave off any attacks coming from my neighbours too. But that was not the point. The ability to excessively spit out new cities once all + Maintenance Civics were changed from is what was.
Spamming 20+ cities just should not be possible, except perhaps on Settler/Chieftain difficulties.


@Joe
Golden Age does not change costs at all if going 100% Science, which I did throughout the entirety of the test. It gives +1 hammer on all plots with at least one hammer already, and +1 commerce on all plots with at least one commerce already, and 25% reduced food needed for cities to grow to the next pop.
The hammers and commerce, with the More is Better C2C is actually barely worth it, does not make as much difference (a bit for sure though) as one would think and certainly far, far from the effect it has on a Vanilla BTS game.
In no way does it scewer the maintenance costs and once out of GA the same result stands for another 40 turns anyway. Where did you get that GA changes Maintenances? Beacuse it does not. In fact, since my cities would be growing faster they would increase in maintenance costs anc civic upkeep costs faster so all in all it should cost MORE from being in GA.
For another perspective, why do YOU not use Golden Ages to better your gameplay? I saved my 2 golden ages used during this game for specific times, when I knew I would benefit a lot from them by getting 0 turn civic switches. That, for me, is the real benefit from GA's in C2C.

I also do not understand what you mean with "excessive amount of time". Less turns means most everything goes faster too, so if comparing Epic and Eons (brings up the timing XML's to compare)
Growth (cities) 1100 v 210: Cities grow 5 times faster in Epic than Eons.
Train (units) 550 v 140: Units are trained 4 times faster in Epic than Eons.
Construct (buildings) 1000 v 180: Buildings are built 5.5 times faster in Epic than Eons.
Create (Projects) 1400 v 210: Projects are finished 6.7 times faster in Epic than Eons (did not get to any so matters not though).
Research (Technologies) 400 v 1500: Research goes 3.75 times faster in Epic than Eons.
Build (Improvements) 170 v 1000: Improvements are built 5.9 times faster in Epic than Eons.

Now, quick glance tells me that as Research takes LONGER compared to everything else in Epic speed I would have more time per technology gain to build the buildings, units, and improvements if I played an Epic game than I did now with my Eons game. Almost 1.5 times more buildings and units even. So I would have had MORE excessive amounts of time to spend on increasing my incomes before getting to the point of my starting to expand.

The point remains, as always, that spamming 20+ cities just should not be possible, except perhaps on Settler/Chieftain difficulties, regardless of what speed or size map used.


If you guys just do not want to see it then you will not. I thought the wanted proof of screenies and saves asked for would open your eyes but seems not. So, I give up. It is not worth the effort to try to help testing C2C and share my observations when... *sighs* Nevermind.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Just for perspective, I'm not really disagreeing with you... just offering another case example.

I don't feel these upkeep base values are mine to address.

I also agree strongly with what you said about some of those building costs. Bringing them back to something reasonable in combination with some overruling value adjustments to compensate and provide some better balance is something I'd be very much in support of. Just... for the record... it's not where I'm currently focused is all.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I tend to have all resources plots connected and improved. Once I get Tribalism I do pop out 4-5 cities as fast as possible building the fire golden age building between the third and forth for maximum effect. I don't build as many military units as you do although I do build two for each city and have a small mobile force to counteract barbarians. However by the time I get the golden age my science is at 70% or lower and only gets lower the more cities I build. Having science below 60% is where Revolutions "financial trouble" kicks in so I need to consolidate by getting those money producing buildings built. Which is why I don't get to 20 cities until the Late Medieval or Renaissance. I also play with Realistic Culture Spread on which is designed to cripple a prehistoric economy because it wont give you the important plots just the ones which are important to an agrarian society.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@BG,
Please, stop taking criticism and observation personal. I Applauded your ability to do what you said you could do. You proved me wrong with Your style of play. But I do have some criticisms which I posted. Whether they (the criticisms) are good or not is up for debate.

You brought up the timing XML's to establish that Epic gets everything faster. Of course it does. You playing 7000 less turn using Epic than Eon and that's part of my point.

These adjustments to costs can't be a blanket, one size fits all, effort. Each game speed has it's own set of time restrictions and therefore rules of play.

And of course these are for SO's Nightmare Option, unless I misunderstood and you want them for the main mod. Am I mistaken?

You asked why don't I use GA's. Partly because I feel it gives the player too big of and edge over the AI. I do use the Fire GA early game but not to always get free Civic changes. Because I ask my self do the AI get or even know how to do the same? Has the AI been programmed to know to save it's Civic changes for a GA period? From all these years in C2C and observing AI actions and reaction, I have to say I really don't think they can.

I started a new 7781 game today on Snail. And I just entered into Ancient Era. I have to say the the build times are not that much different, game play wise than epic. Not that they are the exact same number of turns but the ratio of turns to build is very similar.

But on this snail game speed I've encountered the same conditions for building cities rapidly as I do for Epic. My Research slider, like DH's has dipped as low as 30%. Then I must Que up more gold producing buildings in all cities to get it back up to the 75-90% range. My next to last city I built took my +12 gold/turn and turned it into a -14 while still in the Preh era. The next city built was after Sed Life and entering Ancient with several Civic changes, and it dropped my Gold/turn by 12 gold, about half the of the one before it. And I have never ever had my gold/turn get above 300 in any Preh era period in any of my games, and basically the same for ancient.

But Unlike you or DH or T-Brd I will Not use Rev or Slavery in my games.

I guess my whole point and criticism is this is not a cookie cutter play mod. It has a wide diversity and that is what must be kept in mind when adjustments are proposed or made. This has been the core of my whole critique of C2C since it was called Prehistoric Mod with the Jungle Girl and Leopard as the splash screen.

I'm fighting by criticizing to keep all gamespeeds/ costs/etc on a level playing field in this mod. That has not always been the case.

If SO likes your results and wants to put them in the mod then go for it. If it messes up my way of playing I'll say so. But don't just give up cause you are catching some flak from me. I give evrybody flak at one time or another. Don't I T-brd, DH.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

You asked why don't I use GA's. Partly because I feel it gives the player too big of and edge over the AI. I do use the Fire GA early game but not to always get free Civic changes. Because I ask my self do the AI get or even know how to do the same? Has the AI been programmed to know to save it's Civic changes for a GA period? From all these years in C2C and observing AI actions and reaction, I have to say I really don't think they can.

Koshling did a lot of work on the AI so that it does know to use GAs for Civic switching and it does save up changes for then.

 

[BlueGenie]

It is not the critisism, that I can take, it is the staring yourself blind on the wrong thing.

It is not a problem as it is now with the Prehistory, and only slightly with the Ancient Eras because these eras Civics have inflated maintenance costs, they have been "patched over". That is why you have trouble expanding during these eras. I will try to show it differently:

Prehistory:
City Maintenance Low Base and HIGH Civic inflated +
LOW income to battle the costs=
hard to expand, high costs for the few cities one can set out.
Reaching the NumCity cap is nearly impossible, no problem occurs.

Ancient:
City Maintenance Low Base and Middling Civic inflated +
Middling income to battle the costs=
Slightly easier to expand but still reaching a cap that is hard to overcome.
It is possible to reach the NumCity cap but still har dot go much past it as income does not make up for new cities placed with middling income.

Classical
City Maintenance Low Base and Low Civic inflated +
HIGH income to battle the costs=
Fast and furious expansion can commence.
Passing the NumCity cap is easy and once that is done there is no stopping as High and rising incomes facilitates more and more expansion.

Later eras do not reduce Civic costs to city maintenances more, the base stays the same, but Civic Upkeep and Inflation starts to matter in an effort to reduce the ever increasing income.
The amount of cities a nation can have is only limited by the space available as each city, with ease, can pay for both itself and the costs of units once being a middling city. Possibly only budding cities do not yet pay fully for themselves but with a few buildings they start doign so pretty fast.

My test is to swhow this. I keep my expansion and income low, not by choice but because that is how the game is designed, until I pass Writing and start reaching all those late Ancient/Early Classic Civis. Then I could hyperexpand, with ease.

To even attempt to fix this without setting "city limits" or inflating Civics even more (which only helps make the problem worse) the Base city maintenance costs need to be adjusted. Those have not been touched since C2C started, probably not since AND and ROM started either but in AND and ROM there is not as much in incomes, mapsizes, resources, that skewer the "maintenaces v income" ratio up as badly as in C2C.

In the Core game I still beleive the NumCity handicap numbers should be at least tripled. This sounds like a drastic change but consider taht they probably should have been slowly raised throughout all the 34 versions that have been and you can see that it is not a lot if it had been done little by little (Diety from 8 to 24, 16 steps, less than +0.5 per version, Noble from 5 to 15, +1 every 3 version, and each version brings more income and more stuff), as it probably should have been.

For SO's Nightmare mode that can be increased more. Maybe not to the numbers I am testing at (Diety 70, Noble 35) but still higher than what is set in Core.

On top of this, as the NumCity numbers are not the only ones needing adjustment, the WorldInfo NumCities- and Distance-Maintenance also need adjusting. Again not as drastically as I have set, and what numbers are good probably need a bunch of playtesting to find. Suffice to say they need 34 versions of changing too though so the increase might look astronomical at first, though no where near my x35 (Duel) through x65 (Gigantic) increases. x10 to x15 might be a good starting point.
The DistanceMaintenance in Worldinfo needs flipping around too, smaller map should have higher distance cost, larger should have lower, somehow these have been reversed.

The current numbers are way off though and these two things, NumCity in Handicap and # and Dist in WorldInfo, have together ensure that "patching" via City Limits and inflated city maintenances in Civics has been introduced and set over time and 34 versions. Patching over a problem will not help in the long run though, only make it worse and worse.

The "patching" that has been done to limit the early expansions in Civics also needs reverting. Keeping it will only keep the huge difference once the "right" civics are taken in any game again.
So those highly inflated NumCities and Distance for a lot of the early civics do need removing or you will end up with the reported -50/turn problem instead.

Anarchism also has a special problem, the early Prehistory actually, as incomes are at 1/3rd normal, maintenances for cities, at least the 2 first, should be almost completely removed. Let units govern the capital completely until Tribalism, makes more sense anyway I think.

Cheers

 

[JosEPh_II]

Thanks for the new perspective and the effort to post it BG.

It helps with understanding your points.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

OK, I think I understand now. You are saying that a portion of the system we have been ignoring would solve things better than the way we have been going about things. Not only that but that these changes will make the civics more sensible, for example.