[NFP] New City-States Envoy Bonuses (Ethiopia DLC)

[Elhoim]

Things I like about this change:

- Buffs T3 buildings a lot. Before they were very lackluster compared to the T1/T2 with envoys. This alone is great.
- Tones down the power of T1 buildings. While you get more yields overall, you need to invest more production to get it.
- The ability to create a mega yield city with the diplomatic quarter. Sure, you can have both "ways", but if for some reason you have a small civ it allows you to stay competitive.

My only hope is that they increase at some point the tech and civic costs to take into account all these extra yields.

 

[Amrunril]

I agree that specialists are underpowered, but terrain and population absolutely do matter. Rationalism (+50% for 3+ adjacency bonus and +50% for 10+ population) is an absolutely key policy card.

I can see how it seems like diminishing returns for populations above 10 (aside from the science from population). A boost to specialists and projects would help this, I think. But a rubbish pop 4 city with a chopped Campus is absolutely not producing as much science as your 20 pop capital with rationalism/Pingala/etc.

If rationalism (or the buildings themselves) had more gradual scaling, rather than binary cut offs at 10 pop and +3 adjacency, I think that would help lot. While the 4 pop city doesn't produce nearly as much science as a 20 pop city, it probably does add more science (and great scientist points) than growing a 10 pop city to 20 pop, especially if there are a lot of city state bonuses involved. That's where I think the incentives are problematic.

 

[AntSou]

The false Tall vs Wide dichotomy will never die, it seems.

Tall does not mean Small. A strong empire is both Wide (many cities) and Tall (large population). There is no buff you can make to enhance tall empires that doesn’t also benefit wide empires, because you will always have more cities that can benefit. Without penalising expansion (not particularly fun), having more cities will always be better. Choosing to have fewer cities is always going to be a self-imposed handicap.

None of this makes any sense to me.

First you move the post on what Tall vs Wide is, give it your own definition, then proceed to argue why the Tall vs Wide dichotomy doesn't work according to the description you just gave.

Then argue "there is no buff you can make to enhance tall empires that doesn’t also benefit wide empires" despite all the evidence of game elements ever created which do exactly this. In what way is the Audience Chamber design supposed to affect small empires just as much as large empires? You can argue the building doesn't have enough of an impact to promote tall over wide, but that's a different matter.

Then you say "without penalising expansion (not particularly fun)". What's not particularly fun? Usually when people say this they mean the type of penalisation we saw in Civ 5. What you're doing here is to proceed from that to argue that all types of penalisation must be definition be unfun. Over-extension is a fundamental mechanic in Europa Universalis. Force limits. Manpower limits. Naval limits. Strong decays. Hell, half of that game is made of penalties.

Civ arguably does that as well, but it's too easy to avoid the penalties. Amenities are too easy to get, reducing all strategy involved in expansion to a simple matter of spamming settlers.

Finally, what's a strong empire, and are we still talking about game elements? A strong empire is whatever we make it to be, depending entirely on how the game is designed. It's not something set in stone before the game is even coded.
_____

TLDR: Tall vs Wide is simply the game choice between using resources to invest in fewer but well developed cities or using those resources to expand and control vaster areas of the map. Both come with advantages/disadvantages. Civ 6 offers no advantage to controlling expansion. Just spam as quickly as you can. It's not fun because there's never anything on the line. No innate disloyalty from distance to capital. No danger from commanding too many generals (total war), no danger from having lots of weak cities because the AI is too incompetent to conquer them, no corruption from widening bureaucracy, etc.

 

[leandrombraz]

Tall does not mean Small. A strong empire is both Wide (many cities) and Tall (large population). There is no buff you can make to enhance tall empires that doesn’t also benefit wide empires, because you will always have more cities that can benefit. Without penalising expansion (not particularly fun), having more cities will always be better. Choosing to have fewer cities is always going to be a self-imposed handicap.

It doesn't need to be a penalty, just something that you can only get if you play tall, in the same way you can only benefit from having multiple districts if you play wide. For example, a policy that boost your specialists based on how many cities you have (more cities reduce the bonus). That would be a source of yields that only tall can benefit from, while wide will remain unchanged, benefiting from district spawn. Tall needs something that you would choose to play tall in order to have it, not because it's strictly better than wide or to avoid a penalty, but rather as a different way to achieve similar results. If tall can't get yields from something that wide can, then tall needs something that is just as exclusive to them.

So far, all the attempts from Firaxis to give tall some love failed because wide can benefit from it just the same. Just do something that wide can't benefit, without directly penalizing it. All tall needs is some exclusive options to shine.

 

[Uberfrog]

First you move the post on what Tall vs Wide is, give it your own definition, then proceed to argue why the Tall vs Wide dichotomy doesn't work according to the description you just gave.

TLDR: Tall vs Wide is simply the game choice between using resources to invest in fewer but well developed cities or using those resources to expand and control vaster areas of the map

I’m not quite sure how I’ve moved the goal posts. You say yourself that Tall is about “well-developed” cities. True, I singled out population size, but this is generally the fundamental difference people are concerned with when comparing "wide" cities settled in remote places and the "tall" cities at the core of an empire (large or small).

You say "well-developed"— cities are developed primarily by growing the population, building districts/buildings and improving tiles. There is no reason not to do this in every city. This is how Civ 6 is designed. City production is independent... a wide player's early cities will still be improved just like a tall player's will be. The only difference is a tall player has arbitrarily decided to stop building settlers at a certain point of the game.

Then argue "there is no buff you can make to enhance tall empires that doesn’t also benefit wide empires" despite all the evidence of game elements ever created which do exactly this. In what way is the Audience Chamber design supposed to affect small empires just as much as large empires? You can argue the building doesn't have enough of an impact to promote tall over wide, but that's a different matter.

Things that are only available in a few cities, be they Governors, Audience Chamber bonuses, Mayan cities don't really discourage wide play, because you can benefit from the boosted core cities... and have more cities on top of that.

This is what I mean by the only counter to wide being penalties to expansion... this is what the Loyalty mechanic is, and it works reasonably well (Dark Ages should be actually bad, though...). Amenities, I agree, could use a tweak. But I think Firaxis has to be careful about going further in this direction, by adding corruption or hard caps on things like cities or armies. Generally having harder limits imposed in a 4X game works against the gameplay drivers that are core to the experience. The most interesting limit to your expansion should be the other players, but yeah... the AI isn't necessarily satisfactory in the regard.

 

[Leucarum]

Played my first game with NFP for an hour over lunch... Ended up having a ridiculous start with first meets on Nazca, Armagh and the Vatican while going for an Ethiopia RV.

Not a remotely representative game, but getting those updated envoys early added up to a lot of extra yields... Especially when going religious as you tend to get some districts online a lot earlier than most victory types. I am just swimming in faith at the moment.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Now, 1 envoy bonus for Commercial CS is only +2 gold, while the 1 envoy bonus for Industrial CS is +1 production, as the new +1 rule goes.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the envoy change seems a strong nerf especially with early Commercial and Industrial CS: +1 science, culture, or faith in early game is still good, but +2 gold is far too marginal, and +1 production hardly helps the industrial zone (which adjacency bonuses are already hard to get early). Early commercial and industrial zone(besides Mail, German, etc.) will more low-priority than before.

 

[DanQuayle]

Imagine the following scenario on Deity standard speed:
AI capital has Encampment with Barracks, Armory and Military Academy
AI capital has the Diplomatic Quarter with the Consulate and Chancery buildings
AI capital has a base production of 40 hammers
AI has at least 6 envoys to two Militaristic city-states
AI is now getting +24 hammers when training units
AI has a production bonus of +80% on deity (if I recall correctly)
AI has the Chivalry military policy card slotted (now I may be dreaming, but lets assume it does)
AI can now push around 173 hammers per turn toward the production of units
A Cavalry unit requires 330 hammers to build; the AI can now produce a new Cavalry every 2 turns!
Now assume that Magnus is established in the capital and has the Black Marketeer title (another far-fetched dream); it now only needs 1 horse pasture to support that output.

That would theoretically made domination much harder!

 

[DanQuayle]

Now that last example was a bit too late game, but let's example more a mid-game example.

Other scenario on Deity standard speed:
AI capital has Encampment with Barracks and Armory
AI capital has the Diplomatic Quarter with the Consulate building
AI capital has a base production of 33 hammers
AI has at least 3 envoys to two Militaristic city-states
AI is now getting +12 hammers when training units
AI has a production bonus of +80% on deity
AI has the Feudal Contract military policy card slotted
AI can now push around 122 hammers per turn toward the production of units
A Musketman unit requires 240 hammers to build; the AI can now produce a new Musketman every 2 turns!
Now assume that Magnus is established in the capital and has the Black Marketeer title; it now only needs 1 niter mine to support that output.

 

[DanQuayle]

That example still holds in the early game!

Other scenario on Deity standard speed:
AI capital has Encampment with Barracks
AI capital has a base production of 16 hammers
AI has at least 1 envoy to two Militaristic city-states
AI is now getting +4 hammers when training units
AI has a production bonus of +80% on deity
AI has the Agoge military policy card slotted
AI can now push around 54 hammers per turn toward the production of units
A Swordsman unit requires 90 hammers to build; the AI can now produce a new Swordsman every 2 turns!
Now assume that Magnus is established in the capital and has the Black Marketeer title; it now only needs 1 Iron mine to support that output.

That last example is basically the same as the current game (without the Ethiopia DLC) and yet I have never seen an enemy capital (controlled by a Deity AI) producing one Swordsman every 2 turns while under attack...
The main reasons are probably the following: does not use the Agoge policy card and does not get the Black Marketeer title (or the strategic ressource management is too hard for the AI to handle altogether).

 

[Alexadamz]

I guess the Tall vs. Wide play will be a little balanced with the Envoy changes, but overall the problems are elsewhere. First, more cities in an empire has no penalty, as ammenities are not a huge malus as happiness was in Civ 5. When they added loyalty with R&F, I thought that could balance this a little, without making wide play unfun, but loyalty is mostly related with pop and distante between cities, not from government and culture. Distance from Capital should be a factor, also distance from Government Plaza and now the DiploQuarter, as those means government control, the sameway as governors give loyalty per turn too. Besides, the same way in Civ 4, culture should make a difference: higher culture means more identification of the people with the civilization. I hope some new game modes in future DLCs could balance this - as they said next modes will be more historical.

Second, the unbalance of Tall vs. Wide is mainly related with the envoy bonuses being too straightforward. That helps new players, but increases snowballing effects from experienced players. They are trying to balance that, but the straightforwardness of the bonuses are still there. There is no flexibility - you get +1, +2 and +3 of the yield for each T1, T2 and T3 buildings. But that is because those buildings are mainly base yield and no extra yields from pop, % per citizen, or from specialists. If envoys could buff also specialists, it would make a huge difference.

 

[Linklite]

The only difference is a tall player has arbitrarily decided to stop building settlers at a certain point of the game.

That's the problem right there, though. The decision to go tell or wide has been made for you by game mechanics. There's no inherent reason why I should choose tall over wide...when I decide to stop going wide and develop my cities, it's as you say, either arbitrary or imposed upon me by circumstances (hitting another Civ, for example). Games like this should be about strategy. Do I go for another city, or focus on what I have? The fact that you describe the decision to focus on what you already have as arbitrary tells all about that decision point.

As for a fix, I don't know. Perhaps a non flat yield for citizens? This is realistic, a town of 100 people will achieve far more than two towns of 50 since their efforts synergise. It's why towns and cities exist in the first place. So with each citizen added, the yield of each citizen would (slightly) increase. This would shift the crossover point later, so give an advantage to playing tall, while not removing the incentive to go wide. I don't know, that's just off the top of my head.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

That example still holds in the early game!

Other scenario on Deity standard speed:
AI capital has Encampment with Barracks
AI capital has a base production of 16 hammers
AI has at least 1 envoy to two Militaristic city-states
AI is now getting +4 hammers when training units
AI has a production bonus of +80% on deity
AI has the Agoge military policy card slotted
AI can now push around 54 hammers per turn toward the production of units
A Swordsman unit requires 90 hammers to build; the AI can now produce a new Swordsman every 2 turns!
Now assume that Magnus is established in the capital and has the Black Marketeer title; it now only needs 1 Iron mine to support that output.

That last example is basically the same as the current game (without the Ethiopia DLC) and yet I have never seen an enemy capital (controlled by a Deity AI) producing one Swordsman every 2 turns while under attack...
The main reasons are probably the following: does not use the Agoge policy card and does not get the Black Marketeer title (or the strategic ressource management is too hard for the AI to handle altogether).

Sure they're easy to produce a unit every 2 turns.
However, we usually use 10+ units together to attack them, so as soon as the unit goes out of the city center/encampment it is destroyed immediately.

 

[Tigranes]

It's Civilization - expanding your Empire is kind of the point ....

Even civ2 already had two paths to victory: to be the last civilization remaining or to build a spaceship and reach Alpha Centauri before any of the other civilizations. In civ5 you could with with 4 cities (Tall play). So no, civilization had long departed from kill 'em all model. There was a noticeable shift from tall to wide for all civ5 players.

 

[DanQuayle]

Sure they're easy to produce a unit every 2 turns.
However, we usually use 10+ units together to attack them, so as soon as the unit goes out of the city center/encampment it is destroyed immediately.

All I'm saying is that if the AI would start to pump out a new unit every 2 turns as soon as the war started, it would increase the odds in their favor or at least make it more difficult.
Usually you don't start to surround their capital on turn 1 of the war. You have to deal with their standing army first, their peripheral cities, maybe even an allied city-state in proximity, etc.
The longer the war would take, the higher the odds in their favor would be since they can reinforce their army faster due to higher production bonuses and shorter travel distances.
They could even react to your army composition: "Ok, you attack me with 10 horsemen, but I am going to build 1 pikeman every 2 turns now!"

 

[steveg700]

It's Civilization - expanding your Empire is kind of the point ....

Overly reductive.

Many of the civlizations in Civ aren't "empires" in any sense. Endless, viral expansion is not the inherent "point" of all civilizations.

Moreover, as a game, 4X's can and certainly should reward developed quality cities against sheer quantity of settler spam, and many actively strive to do.

Even civ2 already had two paths to victory: to be the last civilization remaining or to build a spaceship and reach Alpha Centauri before any of the other civilizations. In civ5 you could with with 4 cities (Tall play). So no, civilization had long departed from kill 'em all model. There was a noticeable shift from tall to wide for all civ5 players.

Yepl. The game's origins were certainly rooted in holding Roman imperialism as the epitome of a glorious civilization, but that's pretty dated now.

 

[Minou]

Interesting analysis @DanQuayle. But, the AI will probably just use all that production to build a bunch of Entertainment Complexes and Holy Sites while being overrun....

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Even civ2 already had two paths to victory: to be the last civilization remaining or to build a spaceship and reach Alpha Centauri before any of the other civilizations. In civ5 you could with with 4 cities (Tall play). So no, civilization had long departed from kill 'em all model.

I don't get the jump from wide vs tall to "kill 'em all", that's a very different discussion. IMO Civ IV had it right with the maintenance costs which included a "number of cities" element. I think part of the problem is that Civ V nerfed wide so much people got used to a way of playing that was out of sorts with the rest of the series. To me a Tall Empire would be one with 10-12 cities not 3- 6!

 

[steveg700]

I don't get the jump from wide vs tall to "kill 'em all", that's a very different discussion. IMO Civ IV had it right with the maintenance costs which included a "number of cities" element. I think part of the problem is that Civ V nerfed wide so much people got used to a way of playing that was out of sorts with the rest of the series. To me a Tall Empire would be one with 10-12 cities not 3- 6!

That's exactly what happened. Civ V left a bad taste in the mouths of players and, I suspect. The regulating mechanism of unhappiness is now toothless. All the double-edge components have been child-proofed.

Ideally, cities are built for purpose--each location having some intrinsic worth--not settled because, hey, why not? I certainly want to have a twenty-city empire in some games, but it should feel like the result of planning, not the result of spamming.

 

[DanQuayle]

Played my first game with NFP for an hour over lunch... Ended up having a ridiculous start with first meets on Nazca, Armagh and the Vatican while going for an Ethiopia RV.

Not a remotely representative game, but getting those updated envoys early added up to a lot of extra yields... Especially when going religious as you tend to get some districts online a lot earlier than most victory types. I am just swimming in faith at the moment.

You have to distinguish faith coming from civilization unique bonuses from faith coming from city-state bonuses, but yes I believe that the Holy Site district and its buildings ares the ones that benefits the most from the changes to the city-state envoy bonuses.

Here I further complete my analysis that I started in the OP:

A proper analysis of the overall impact (buff or nerf) of the new tiered bonus system for city-states envoys is a complex one as you first need to make two different sets of assumptions, namely about
A) When you reach the 1/3/6 envoy thresholds
B) When you complete the T1, T2 & T3 district building


A) When do you reach the 1/3/6 envoy thresholds?

Reaching the 1 envoy threshold for 1 city-state comes much earlier than reaching the same threshold for all 12 city-states on a standard sized map. So which one should be considered? (possibilities of 1 to 12) I arbitrarily choose 4 city-states, because it is the max number on a single type of city-state that you can get on a standard sized map and also because if all city-state types (6) are evenly distributed (2*6) it allows you to focus your strategy on 2 different city-state types (2*2).
As previously mentioned in my other post, there is a number of sources for bonus envoys that you do not get every single games (such as the Apadana, specific civilization bonuses, great persons). I do not take these into account in my analysis.
Furthermore, there is also the RNG factor of quests that is difficult to quantify. How easy are the quests? Do the quests deviate from your planned strategy? Are the city-states you focusing on the ones giving you the easy quests? If you find a city-state late, you have less opportunity to get more quest. If you go a war with a civilization that is suzerain of city-states, your quests will get canceled, etc.

So, my conservative guestimate is the following:
First meeting: Early ancient era (bonus envoy that may or may not happen for any nb of city-states)
Threshold reached for 4 city-states:
1 Envoy: Early Classical era
3 envoys: Late Classical era / Early Medieval era
6 envoys: Late Renaissance / Early Industrial era


B) When do you complete the T1, T2 & T3 district building?

First, similarly to the above point, I have to make an arbitrary choice. How many copies of the same building should I consider in my analysis? Getting your first library built comes at a different timing than completing your 3rd or your 10th… Here, I arbitrarily chose the number of 3 copies so that the bonus from city-states envoys “starts to become more relevant”. Variability in terrain, production/chopping, ability to rush buy, etc. can all affect build times. Here, I consider an ‘average start’. I am not making any assumptions about what the current meta is or what it should be or what strategy a player should focus on. I’m only considering what it is possible to build at what time during the game.
Second, the answer is unique for each type of districts that benefit from city-state bonuses (7), because their respective buildings are unlocked at different places in the tech or civic trees.

So, my conservative guestimate for 3 building copies is the following:
Holy Site: 3 Shrines in Late Classical era / 3 Temples in Late Medieval era / 3 T3 religious buildings in Late Renaissance era
Campus: 3 Libraries in Late Classical era / 3 Universities in Early Renaissance era / 3 Research Labs in Late Atomic era
Encampment: 3 Barracks in Late Classical era / 3 Armories in Early Renaissance era / 3 Military Academies in Early Modern era
Commercial Hub: 3 Markets in Late Medieval era / 3 Banks in Late Industrial era / 3 Stock Exchanges in Late Modern Era
Harbor: 3 Lighthouses in Late Medieval era / 3 Shipyards in Late Industrial era / 3 Seaports in Early Atomic era
Theater Square: 3 Amphitheaters in Late Medieval era / 3 Museums in in Late Industrial era / 3 Broadcast Towers in in Late Atomic era
Industrial Zone: 3 Workshops in the Industrial era / 3 Factories in Early Modern era / 3 Power Plants in Early Modern Era


C) Nerf or buff?

So is the change a nerf or a buff? I believe there are 22 different answers to that question! One for each level of building (3) for each district type (7) plus the early meeting consideration. For this, you need to consider the intersection of the timings I outlined in A and in B.

Evaluations:
First meeting/Capital bonus: Nerf++
Holy Site: T1: Nerf- / T2: Buff / T3: Buff++
Campus: T1: Nerf- / T2: Buff- / T3: Buff-
Encampment: T1: Nerf- / T2: Buff- / T3: Buff+
Commercial Hub: T1: Nerf+ / T2: Neutral / T3: Buff
Harbor: T1: Nerf+ / T2: Neutral / T3: Buff
Theater Square: T1: Nerf+ / T2: Neutral / T3: Buff-
Industrial Zone: T1: Nerf++ / T2: Neutral / T3: Buff+

Scale : Nerf++, Nerf+, Nerf, Nerf-, Neutral, Buff-, Buff, Buff+, Buff++


D) Discussion

First meeting envoy bonuses are effectively halved and reduce the early game luck / variability.
This nerf is doubled in the specific case of trade city-states (from +4 to +1).

T1 buildings:
Even for the early T1 buildings (Shrine, Library, Barracks), the gain of at max 20 turns of +1 yield does not compensate for the -1 yield for the rest of the game (50+ turns) even when you consider that earlier yields are more valuable than later ones. The main reason is that you can unlock the 3 envoy threshold relatively early which reduces their timing window.
For the Industrial zone, you won’t even have a workshop completed when you would reach 3 envoys to an Industrial city-state. Thus the early compensation factor is null and the long term reduction is in full effect.

T2 buildings:
The first set of T2 building does benefit from the threshold reduction of 6 envoys to 3 since you are expected to be able to complete a sufficient number of them before you are reasonably expected to get 6 envoys to their corresponding city-state types. These are the Temples, Universities and Armories.
The second set of T2 buildings does not benefit from the threshold reduction of 6 envoys to 3 since you are expected to be able to get 6 envoys to their corresponding city-state type by the time you complete them (if you had chosen to focus on them). They are the Banks, Shipyards, Museums and Factories.

T3 buildings:
You get the T3 religious buildings right about the same time you would unlock the 6 envoy threshold to religious city-states if you had focused on them. They are the earliest T3 buildings you can unlock in the game; thus they also are the buildings that benefit the most for the new 6 envoy bonus.
On the other end, the Research Labs and Broadcast Towers are the T3 buildings that are unlocked the latest. They still do get a buff, but you benefit from it for less turns since they are built much later.


*Note: I am considering the era the player is in, not the world era.