New forms of REX

[remconius]

One of the key concepts of civ III was Rapig Early Expansion.

REX reasoning
The idea being that you need citizens to work tiles and earn resources. So the more citizens the more production and gold to go around. And as one city can grow one citizen every X turns, 10 cities grow 10 citizens every X turns. And thus more cities is more power in the long run.

REX limited by maintenance
The above reasoning will still be true for civ IV but is being countered with maintenance costs. So as you expand your growth rate and production capabilities will grow but maintenance costs cause your finances to go negative leaving you less and less money for culture and science. This means you cant REX infinitely and there is a balance to the expansion rate.

How to still REX?
More cities will still be more powerful, because
resources = power
and
citizens = resources
and
more cities = more citizen growth

So the question is how can you still expand fast without turning your finances into a mess? It depends on how maintenance costs are implemented.
Simple concept
If it's a simple concept of each city costs more than the previous one, you'd have to create a financial basis to pay for the cities away from the capital.
Complex concept
Knowing Civ, the concept could be slightly more complex. You might have a base number of cities with the lowest amount of maintenance costs (like the good old Ring-city placement theories) and above that there would be a step change in costs exponentially increasing maintenance. There will probably be factors to offset or increase the number of low maintenance cities. This could be based on the number of citizens you have, the type of government, Forbidden palace, certain technologies, health level, culture level, happiness etc.

In order to get more cities the focus of expansion will be in ways to offset or counter the increased maintenance costs.

Civ IV paradigm
One thing that could be the case is that you have the choice for few cities with lots of cash, high culture and high science. Or lots of cities with almost no culture, science and cash but high production and growth. And then there is the balanced appoach...

 

[MeteorPunch]

Maybe REX should be enabled by a bad start instead of a good one. The people have a desire to get the heck out of here!

 

[Jazzmail]

I'm sorry but do not corruption and waste already put a similar brake on expansion in civ3?
The more cities or the further away from the capital you get, the fewer shields and commerce, until eventually you just get 1 shield and 1 commerce (then ofcourse spend on courthouses, forpalaces and develop demo or communism to help alluviate the problem).

Besides, there's nothing wrong with a little early landgrabbing. It's one the fun aspects of the game.
The designers promoted this behaviour by putting restrictions on city size (6 until aquaduct etc) and by putting a garanteed base production on new city squares. That and spreading resources all across the map and much much more. It's the game really.

 

[remconius]

I'm sorry but do not corruption and waste already put a similar brake on expansion in civ3?
The more cities or the further away from the capital you get, the fewer shields and commerce, until eventually you just get 1 shield and 1 commerce

In Civ IV corruption has been replaced by maintenance costs. And Pollution is replaced by a health system. All cities will be just as productive, but more cities will start to drain your gold supply more and more. With lots of cities you will have no money to spend on science or culture.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The problem is that this whole premise is based on a LOT of assumptions. We have heard several times that, though lots of cities will still be an option, fewer more specialised cities will be able to keep pace with those attempting to REX, probably because of the impact specialization of your cities will have on the strength of your research, culture and economy. I also wouldn't be suprised if research and culture cost more to maintain the more cities you have-but this is also an assumption on my part.
So, my feeling is that-though REXing may be a strategy every so often, we will rarely see the past situation where nations stuck on islands with 3-4 cities, until they get map-making or even navigation, will ultimately lose the game.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[remconius]

The problem is that this whole premise is based on a LOT of assumptions.

Of course it is built on assumptions, because the game has not been released yet. I am just trying to speculate, given the information released, what the new game will be like and how things change.

We all know how to beat games in civ3 at the highest difficulties, but we can probably trash all those strategies and need to come up with new ones. Until we get the game, all we can do is analyse and speculate what we know.

I also wouldn't be suprised if research and culture cost more to maintain the more cities you have-but this is also an assumption on my part.

What we do know is that more cities are more expensive to maintain. So you can devote less money to culture and science on the sliders. Hence it would not be necessary to make science and culture more expensive as city number increase.

So, my feeling is that-though REXing may be a strategy every so often, we will rarely see the past situation where nations stuck on islands with 3-4 cities, until they get map-making or even navigation, will ultimately lose the game.

It would be great if a strategy with fewer would be viable. You might actually be able to win by keeping maintenance low through few cities, allowing you to win the science race, gaining power in trading those. What will remain is that if you have less cities, you will not be able to out-produce the AI. So domination games, space races will be difficult to win with few cities. You'll need to conquer a few at some point.

 

[Jaca]

My 2 cents is that you will be kind of forced to first build the network around your first very few cities before you can start REX-ing. People already mentioned that cities far away (or poorly connected to the rest?!) will pressure you money-wise. But given the new fact that unhappy citizens will no longer work, this will automatically put direct pressure on growth and production too and even more naturally slow you down - unless you pay even more money. Hence my feeling is that you will probably first hook up the food and luxury resources nearby (= build the early network, a firm platform) and perhaps the multiplicative city improvements, so spending a lot more effort into that primitive civ before you start thinking of a real expansion.

The fact that earlier on, you need to discover techs like animal domestication, fishing and the like, feels like another argument for this.

It is of course a lot of guessing and assuming, or even a kind of "wishful thinking", but I would find it a more realistic approach. In civIII you first mass produced settlers and then started to work on the network. Here, you may first need to do it in reverse order, which seems historically more "correct".

Kind regards,
Jaca

 

[Brain]

It all comes down to game dynamics. There are two different ways that the game designers can solve this:

1) Similar game dynamics: REXing is not the only way to win, but it's still the most advantageous way to win.

2) Completely different game dynamics: REXing is less advantegeous than other game strategies.

It might be harder to win with large empires or easier to win with smaller ones, but the crucial question is not which one is easier with respect to Civ3, but which one is best in Civ4. If it's still more advantageous to have a larger empire than a smaller one then nothing will have changed.

Note that a third solution is also possible - to make REXing equally advantageous to other strategies. However, I don't think the game developers will be able to balance the game so perfecetly.

 

[Atrebates]

It seem thst there are two obvious ways to do this (simply),
1)Have cities linked to techs, so 1-5 no maintenance cities before tech X
2)Link it to culture (or similar, maybe happiness if you want things dangerously unpredictable) with multipliers for gov type