New Wonders!

[mitsho]

Well, with more time, I do think these suggestions are better served as opportunities. So I'm not sure we need to include them. The basic idea is the same as the "Tallest Building", i.e. as soon as someone else builds it, you lose the effect of your building. Works with Olympic Parks of which there are a lot all around the world and World Exhibition Halls were a big thing in the 19th century and still exist today (List of places).

Oh, you're talking of effects? Either have a complete system where there's one building for every yield (Tallest Building -> Production, Olympic Games -> Culture, World Fair -> Gold, ... , +20% in city) or have them as happyness boosters. But I'm leaning more and more to make them opportunities, it's a much more elegant system than having another building to build and cluttering our city interface. Also the rewards can be adapted, as headcase demosntrated with the Olympics above...

 

[Thalassicus]

I like the idea of doing those things as opportunities. Like... some business wants to construct a big building, and we can choose to support construction, block it, or let it continue uninterrupted. That opens up probably another dozen opportunities we could create.

 

[mitsho]

You can even do several steps for olympic summer/winter games and world cups, like bidding (do I trust in the quality of my cities bid or do I bribe the necessary people to get it for sure?), the preparation (invest in infrastructure or not?) and then the games itself. You can also apply it between city states (and maybe even big civs?): "Should we support Rio de Janeiro or Almaty in its bid for the games?"

 

[Stalker0]

For gameplay reasons, those civs that are behind should have a hope of winning. The Cultural Victory is good for that.

Its funny you mention culture, I actually consider it the WORST form of victory to come from behind.

What I mean by that is, if I am behind I plan to change to a cultural victory in order to win.

Cultural to me requires a very specific criteria set in order to be successful.

1) A very tall empire, or a wide one based on puppets. You simply cannot have a lot of cities and win cultural.

2) Policies: There are certain policies that are practically mandated for a cultural victory.

3) Landmarks: Currently the primary source of culture is artist landmarks. If you haven't been going artists you have missed out on the majority of your culture.


With diplomatic I can amass big gold and still have a shot, or kill enemy city states so mine get to vote. Scientific I can use espionage, and if I can't catch on science I can deny my enemy aluminum or focus on production to build the parts faster. Military is the ultimate catchup imo. But culture....I don't think you can switch to a culture victory and expect to win.

 

[Stalker0]

I like the idea of doing those things as opportunities. Like... some business wants to construct a big building, and we can choose to support construction, block it, or let it continue uninterrupted. That opens up probably another dozen opportunities we could create.

I agree here, we can create lots of small variety, no reason to create several whole new buildings and wonders, the game doesn't really need that imo.

 

[Ahriman]

For gameplay reasons, those civs that are behind should have a hope of winning

I really disagree with this. Civs that are way behind should be dominated by the emerging superpowers. There is just no way that a civ that is way behind (and a civ that is small but is way ahead in policies isn't necessarily "behind") should still have a good shot at winning, or being "ahead" has no meaning.

 

[Zaldron]

2) Policies: There are certain policies that are practically mandated for a cultural victory.

3) Landmarks: Currently the primary source of culture is artist landmarks. If you haven't been going artists you have missed out on the majority of your culture.

I don't think that specific policies are *nearly* as important in GEM for a cultural victory. The 33% in cities with wonders is gone and I believe the 10% reduction from the finisher is also gone. All that's left is 10% on cities with WWs.

Landmarks are however a key part of a cultural victory, and if you've avoided artists previously you will in fact have a hard time getting them in the later game.


EDIT: I agree that if a civ is way behind there should NOT be a strong catch up mechanism to let them win (even if that way-behind civ is me).

 

[mystikx21]

I don't think that specific policies are *nearly* as important in GEM for a cultural victory. The 33% in cities with wonders is gone and I believe the 10% reduction from the finisher is also gone. All that's left is 10% on cities with WWs.

Landmarks are however a key part of a cultural victory, and if you've avoided artists previously you will in fact have a hard time getting them in the later game.

In GEM so far, there is still 25% cost reduction for new cities, -10% cost+free policy, several that add culture or culture per happiness, and I suspect Freedom will still allow buying artists, making it a little higher on the culture win priority. I wouldn't say these are as potent as 33% on wonders (I don't see a 10% on WWs either, just extra on WWs themselves), but it's still several policies that are extremely useful for culture wins.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Stalker0
I do agree that it's hard to change to a culture victory and win. I'd like to clarify one thing:

You simply cannot have a lot of cities and win cultural.

This is a common but inaccurate assumption caused by a misleading tooltip in the vanilla game. Tall and wide empires are equally capable of cultural victory, so long as we're peaceful. The tradeoff is between conquest and culture victories, not tall and wide. I documented it in the policy cost increases per city thread in the Strategy forum. It used to be exclusive to Vem, but Firaxis adopted the Vem approach about a year ago.

Civs that are way behind should be dominated by the emerging superpowers.

I do agree that if someone's behind in most areas of the game, they should lose. Ideally a neighbor conquers them!

However, I think it's important to emphasize "most areas" of the game. If someone is 50% ahead in research but 5% behind in culture, I think it's reasonable for them to build a lot of late-game culture buildings and edge out a culture victory over people who started earlier.

 

[Stalker0]

This is a common but inaccurate assumption caused by a misleading tooltip in the vanilla game. Tall and wide empires are equally capable of cultural victory, so long as we're peaceful.

I very much remember, if you remember I had a big debate about it with you


To reiterate my primary counterpoint, the vast majority of culture is generated by one city...primarily because of artist landmarks and cultural multipliers like National Epic.

Now, science and commerce can also work the same way...except that no penalty is applied through future cities. When I build a new city, my science capital doesn't skip a beat. When you do the same for my cultural capital, suddenly it is producing less culture overall because of the increase in policy costs.

 

[Stalker0]

I very much remember, if you remember I had a big debate about it with you


To reiterate my primary counterpoint, the vast majority of culture is generated by one city...primarily because of artist landmarks and cultural multipliers like National Epic.

Now, science and commerce can also work the same way...except that no penalty is applied through future cities. When I build a new city, my science capital doesn't skip a beat. When you do the same for my cultural capital, suddenly it is producing less culture overall because of the increase in policy costs.

Thinking about this again, I wonder if the Great Works idea will be the best way to counteract this phenomena.

If Great Works simply add to my culture total, then artists don't need to be centralized, and since wide empires can generally produce more GP, that might bring Wide back in the game.

 

[Ahriman]

I tend to agree with Stalker that Wide empires are never going to be as effective at cultural victories, but I disagree in that I really don't think this is a problem. Wide empires have lots of other things going for them. You're going to be hard-pressed to win a Conquest victory without a Wide empire. Diplomatic arguably favors wide slightly, as they can bring in more gold, and can probably fulfill a few more of the CS quests. Scientific can be done through wide or tall. Culture favors Tall. I think that's fine - there should be a victory type that favors Tall.

I really don't see any need for a new great works mechanic. Feels like feature creep.

 

[Stalker0]

As a note, I've come to terms with culture as a tall only victory condition, I didn't mean to imply we should "fix" anything, I just intended to counter another posters point.

 

[Thalassicus]

Great Works are something I wanted in the game for two years, because they make so much more sense than Culture Bombs. Firaxis got rid of the bombs from artists, but didn't add great works, which caused the problem we discussed earlier (frustrating great generals).

I very much remember, if you remember I had a big debate about it with you

Oh silly me, my bad!

It had been such a long time, I didn't remember. Sorry.

@Ahriman
Building a new city adds to costs, but also adds to income with culture buildings. Wide empires also research faster & unlock new culture buildings sooner:

Blue = large empire, high , new culture sources sooner.
Green = small empire, lower income, but also lower costs.

 

[Ahriman]

@Ahriman
Building a new city adds to costs, but also adds to income with culture buildings. Wide empires also research faster & unlock new culture buildings sooner:

This ignores several things.
a) A lot of culture comes from one-shot features like landmarks and national/world wonders that cannot be scaled.
b) Tall empires are not necessarily slower at tech advancement, because they build their libraries and universities earlier (as in: building a couple of libraries covers many more people) and so have higher research efficiency per pop. Some of this depends on whether the national college reverts to VEM design with +X% science rather than a free tech. [Stacking this up in a city with Academies is a big science booster, which I think is appropriate for a Tall empire, particularly as that city is now vulnerable to espionage.]
c) Cultural city states give fixed culture, so the value of this declines with more cities.

In any case, I don't think this is a problem, so I'm not advocating any particular change.

Great Works are something I wanted in the game for two years, because they make so much more sense than Culture Bombs. Firaxis got rid of the bombs from artists, but didn't add great works, which caused the problem we discussed earlier (frustrating great generals).

Maybe I was confusing great works with something else. If "great works" just means a one-shot boost to social policy generation, as a great scientist gives a one-shot boost to science, then that's a good feature that deserves to be in.
Maybe I was confusing with some kind of other "achievements" type thing that people were talking about in the context of wonders, like basically particular Wonders that were generated only through great people. This is what I'm opposed to; we already have Wonders, we don't need another mechanic that is just-like-wonders-but-slightly-different.

 

[Thalassicus]

The "great works" are an instant culture bonus like the instant bonus of merchants/scientists/engineers. It's called "great works" because it picks a random historical work of art, and displays information about it on the screen.

For players aiming for a culture victory, the player-specific culture factors are included in the tables of the post I linked (under the world wonder, citystate, and landmark numbers). With those included each new city slows policy rate by only 1-3%. Since each city also adds to science and gold, building new cities is always beneficial for a culture victory, if we have the happiness and decent land to support peaceful expansion.

For players not pursuing a culture victory, each new developed city has no effect on policy rate.

 

[Ahriman]

The "great works" are an instant culture bonus like the instant bonus of merchants/scientists/engineers. It's called "great works" because it picks a random historical work of art, and displays information about it on the screen.

Ok, that's good then, objection withdrawn, my bad.

if we have the happiness

Rather important.
The analysis seems to ignore happiness as a limiting factor, when happiness is the only limiting factor. It also seems to assume that new cities come into being immediately with all possible buildings constructed. Happiness matters, so does construction time, so does building maintenance costs and road costs and worker road build time.

In any case, I don't think there are any design issues in dispute here, so I don't think this disagreement needs to be resolved.

 

[Babri]

I really like the idea aboout new national wonders/projects.
Projects are one of the aspects lacking in ciV, Great Horde sounds interesting for cavalry civs. Would fit well with Arabs & Songhai UUs. It could provide effects for limited time like boost for flank attack bonus & cavalry units get fear promotion + lower costs for producing & maintaining them. How does that sound ?

Similarly cold war would result in ur foes loose influence from ur allied CS at very fast rate along with the nuclear bonus suggested in OP.

 

[Ahriman]

Projects are one of the aspects lacking in ciV

How are they different from wonders?

Great Horde sounds interesting for cavalry civs

I thought Thal's philosophy was that combat was already sufficiently easy that we should try to stay away from further combat boosts whenever possible Discipline stayed in only because it tended to favor the AI more than the player.

Limited time boosts are particularly bad for the AI, because the AI can't intelligently plan for them (eg by building up the right kind of army and planning the timing of a new war to conincide with a temporary benefit).

 

[Babri]

How are they different from wonders?

1. U cannot rush them with GE.
2. Different ideas would go more well with projects than a World wonder. Even some world wonders right now look silly & they would be better as projects, example the Great Firewall.
3. Different sets of bonuses maybe.?..?
4. Also it is about finely categorizing the wonders.

I thought Thal's philosophy was that combat was already sufficiently easy that we should try to stay away from further combat boosts whenever possible Discipline stayed in only because it tended to favor the AI more than the player.

Hmm... Is it possible to somehow make change AI priorities for short number of turns & then revert back ? Or atleast putting more emphasis on cost effectiveness so when it bilds Great Horde for example then it would prefer cheaper & stronger horsemen.

Limited time boosts are particularly bad for the AI, because the AI can't intelligently plan for them (eg by building up the right kind of army and planning the timing of a new war to conincide with a temporary benefit).

By the same logic AI is even worse at handling penalties but we still have GW & Freedom finisher.
I think if we somehow associate AI priorities with what wonders they build that might help it. Not sure if that is possible with current modding tools though.