No districts/buildings/wonders needed to surpass EVERYONE in science?

[metricfive]

Hey guys, please share your thoughts about this. I really really love civilization games (sid please have my babies), but this civ 6 thing is frustrating me and I still hope so badly that I'm missing something here and that the game is more balanced than it seems to me right now.

I've played 4 full games now with a friend. They all ended with the same frustration about the crazy stupid benefits of spamming 'empty' cities. If you want to build amazing large cities, place districts strategically, build those beautiful wonders, think again- if there is just one player spamming 'empty' cities you will not win. By the time those players get to the medieval era you, a spammer, will already be SO extremely far ahead in science that nobody can stop you. You'll have superior military units and they'll never be able to catch up in tech.

So spamming empty cities is just that- making cities with no districts, wonders or anything really- okay okay, maybe a monument here and there.. Oh and yes of course you'll also build many military units. (they're coming for your gold!)

But why not build buildings at the start of the game?
In our experience (standard speed):
You don't need districts/wonders/buildings at the start of the game. Focus on a bunch of settlers and military units. Oh and maybe spend some coin to get a builder every now and then.

So you probably also have noticed, you get science from population. To get this science, you just need population. No buildings. About 2-3 cities with a low population without any buildings/districts will generate as much science as one awesome 'larger' city with a perfectly placed campus district with library. Thing is: usually by the time your opponents actually have build a campus district with library etc, you should already have surpassed them with cities AND therefor also in science. Not to speak about those poor souls spending their precious production on wonders (shouldve have been building settlers my friend).

Penalties for spamming and having lots of cities don't really seem to have much of an impact. I'm talking about increased settler, builder and district cost. (You're not building districts anyway!). Oh and I almost forgot about the penalties you'll get with happiness or, as the cool kids call it these days, amini..ametinie..amenities. Don't worry about those amenities, with so much land you'll find those luxery resources you need. And if its really a problem just build a entertainment district after you've surpassed everyone in science. Housing? Don't need that at the start- if you can place cities near those water places with +3 bonus, but if its not possible say found a city anyway say 'meh', shrug and focus on getting that next plot of land. What's left? Diplomatic penalties? Pah! Just take their land if they bother you- (ps: you are building military units we talked about right?) Your military is seriously getting a boost fast from all that science- don't worry about their warriors and archers too much if someone would attack you. But you lose a population if you build a settler, right? Because your cities have so little population to start with, you wont notice the effects from this- you'll grow food fast.

Once you've surpassed everyone in science, start building the industrial districts and you're good to go. Now you can focus on everything else- like build a campus now, do whatever. Build every mid game wonder you want- nobody has the tech yet. And you're only going to grow in science because you're gaining more population in all those cities.

Solutions... maybe? I think?
Penalties for having multiple cities should have more impact!! I think about:
-Increased science cost for all techs per city owned
-Even higher increased settler cost
-Just a stupid idea: After building a settler lose temporary amenities so it will be hard to keep building settlers in the same city.
-Just an idea: Cities with no districts make people unhappy (unamenitial?) the longer they stay empty. This way you cant just keep spamming settlers from every city

'Empty' cities with low population shouldn't be able to compete with cities with beautifully strategically placed campus districts and buildings and so on:
-A lot less science gain from cities without a campus! Like A LOT.
-Make campus cost less production to build (?)

Honestly I dont really know what is needed for the game, I have a few stupid ideas (see above) but I'm not even really sure if there is a strategy to counter the 'empty' city spam. Which is why I'm very curious about your thoughts. I just know that for me personally this exploit takes a bit of joy out of the game. I don't think that this is the way the designers had it in mind, like for example: you don't see the AI spamming cities in this way to gain science. Usually with the AI: by the time you have 10 cities, they still have 3-5. So something feels wrong here for me.

I think people should be able to expand as much as they want, if thats the way they want to play- That's the fun of civ! Play the way you want! Right now it feels like the only way to win is to expand as quickly and as much as possible. I think expanding should be more difficult and people that like to make large and beautiful cities shouldn't fall behind too much. Right now, if you dont spam you will fall behind to the extreme.

So... What are your thoughts?

 

[Proteus]

An importants factor for scientific (and cultural) progress now seems to be, to meet the requirements for boosting a technologies progress.

With lots of boost conditions for technologies fulfilled, it seems to be easy to surpass the AI with little effort

 

[DaDokisinX]

I have played 2 completed games so far, and I am getting the same feel. I really like the game, the music, and all the new features. However, my biggest gripe is the science/civic tree.

Each game, right around the tail end of the medieval era, I start to fly through the tech tree with ease. Science victories are my least favorite victory, so i often have no more than 2 science districts just as a token amount throughout the game. Even this "neglect" toward science still puts me miles ahead of all the other civs with few exceptions. For example, as England, I was quite excited to dominate the world in the Renaissance era with my unique units and such, but by the time I started to build them, I was already in the industrial era (about 15-20 turns or 2-4 techs later), and all my units were obsolete : ( . And before I knew it again, I was in the modern era with infantry shortly after. The Renaissance--->Modern eras seem to fly by very quickly with regards to how fast you can build things as well as the actual amount of turns you spend in them, which seems to suggest that it is FAR TOO EASY to tech up. I personally don't mind the new system for building cities, which as you have noted encourages you to place more than the in previous game (penalizes you less).

To fix this issue, I think alterations to the tech trees or how you gather science should be made. For example, they can make boosting far harder to accomplish (i.e. construct 6 musketmen instead of 3, etc.), thereby slowing tech progression but still rewarding specialization. But as to your point, I think they should also reduce to science gain from cities/population and shift it more into science districts, thereby making the districts more relevant and slowing down the game a bit. I like your suggestion with regard to the science district in a city.

I got to in information era by 1800 first playthrough and easily steamrolled all opponents, something should change.

 

[rpgalon]

Don't agree with everything you said, but I also think they should reduce science from population and increase the science each tech requires.

Making Eurekas like 33% would also be nice.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

Isn't reducing the science per pop the better solution?
regarding tech boosts, from what I read the suggestion of lowering the value of tech boost seems good, like a 33% or 25%, so that even if the boosts are easy to get (and teching is too fast), you might actually choose not to try and get the boosts sometimes because you may be more interested in what you gain from doing different things that don't trigger this or that boost, also that would reduce the difference with the AI

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

Why does pop generate anything beyond the tile they work? Civ 4 didn't do it.

Completely agree; game balance is terrible for all the reasons stated in the OP.

 

[Matjillam]

Perhaps the AI is struggling because of this.

The AI doesn't seem to be able to build any form of empire. Which means that the human player can surpass them in science by just going wide without focusing on districts.

Kinda sad right now

 

[x2Madda]

Perhaps the AI is struggling because of this.

The AI doesn't seem to be able to build any form of empire. Which means that the human player can surpass them in science by just going wide without focusing on districts.

Kinda sad right now

This is the issue right now. Playing on king and above (because prince doesn't even declare war!) and the AI will zealously go for religion and religion districts but that is the extent of it They seldom build enough districts or expand enough, usually falling to barbarians or occassionally to each other. The AI is only good at spamming military and nothing else. The only reason they are good at religion victory is because it is a form of combat.

You do need science districts if you want a science victory time that is respectable, but production and trade routes are king in civ6. I apprechiate the attempt to curtail population being king but its the right fix for the wrong game. Its seems like they wanted to keep happiness but scale it back and then thought "we should also add more to limit the human player".