No reason to not expand in BNW. Impossible to expand a lot in BNW

[Biz_]

In the 2010 version of Civ V, I recall a wide spectrum of playstyles. Basically everything between a few cities and a ton of cities was not only possible, but also competitive (i.e. you could beat very good opponents following any of the options)

To spell it out the original Civ 5 let you pick:
- stay at a few cities and emphasize social policies = viable way to achieve victory. even without culture victory, the quantity of extra policies would be massive compared to larger empires
- grow to mid-size. social policy victory would be a lot tougher this way, but there are other ways to win
- grow to large size. social policy victory would be impossible, but there are other ways to win

Since then, I played Brave New World and saw the following changes:
- social policy penalty has been reduced from 30% per additional city to 10%
- culture (social policy) victory has been completely removed
- a city without a new luxury will always increase unhappiness that cannot be easily controlled

As a result of this, it seems like Brave New World is forcing everyone to make mid-size empires
- obviously nothing is "forced" in the literal sense, but I'm talking about what is competitively viable
- I don't know when exactly all these changes were made. I am seeing them in BNW

I just have some simple questions...
why would I ever want to stay at a few cities (if I can stay happy & safe with more)?
why would I ever try to make a lot of cities (if I cannot stay happy doing so)?

@mods:
this time it would be nice if you could refrain from locking the thread until people have had time to actually answer the questions properly instead of talking about horses or something.

 

[otaman1]

Really? What do you mean Cultural Victory has been completely removed? I've already explained this in a prior thread of yours ranting about the same thing. Firaxis changed Cultural Victory, not removed it. Plus, with Poland's Solidarity, they would've been OP and probably make the Utopia Project in the Modern era

 

[Nikodim]

In Vanilla Civ V you didn't have religion (mx. 7 happiness per city) nor ideologies though, both essential in wide empires.

Anyhow, in Vanilla Civ V, going tall had absolutely no benefits except for Cultural victory, which clearly made you the weakest player. Extra social policies, you might say. Yet, that was untrue - In Vanilla, cultural victory had almost mandatory piety, forcing you to dip into commerce (barely useful), autocracy, honor, order or liberty (very useless).

Also staying happy isn't necessarily something you have to do. Play ICS, get those size three or four cities that have neutral happiness, don't grow. It's not too hard.

 

[Biz_]

Really? What do you mean Cultural Victory has been completely removed? I've already explained this in a prior thread of yours ranting about the same thing. Firaxis changed Cultural Victory, not removed it. Plus, with Poland's Solidarity, they would've been OP and probably make the Utopia Project in the Modern era

tourism victory isn't culture...
the point is that the social policy victory was one of the main disincentives to expanding

also there is nothing you can do to prevent someone else from making culture, especially if your empire is smaller

 

[Biz_]

In Vanilla Civ V you didn't have religion (mx. 7 happiness per city) nor ideologies though, both essential in wide empires.

Also staying happy isn't necessarily something you have to do. Play ICS, get those size three or four cities that have neutral happiness, don't grow. It's not too hard.

It kind of forces you not to grow globally, which wasn't the case when you could gain happiness from additional cities in early builds. I mean technically you can keep all your cities small, but the choice to grow is taken away from the player because of the "no positive happiness" rule

Anyhow, in Vanilla Civ V, going tall had absolutely no benefits except for Cultural victory, which clearly made you the weakest player. Extra social policies, you might say. Yet, that was untrue - In Vanilla, cultural victory had almost mandatory piety, forcing you to dip into commerce (barely useful), autocracy, honor, order or liberty (very useless).

A few policies were less useful, but you still had extremely beneficial ones and 10-20 more unlocked than any opponent playing expansively. Now with 10% cost per city instead of 30% a 8-10 city empire can unlock almost as many as a small one... it's kind of pointless to stay small

 

[Nikodim]

tourism victory isn't culture...
the point is that the social policy victory was one of the main disincentives to expanding

also there is nothing you can do to prevent someone else from making culture, especially if your empire is smaller

Except that you can conquer them, try to assert hegemony with tourism or cull their culture production with the world congress choice to decrease culture GP spawn.

 

[Buccaneer]

I'm quite sure you can win any victory effectively at high levels by having few cities and going tall.

 

[kaspergm]

Without going into the details of all the arguments here, it does seem like OP has a point that they've taken away much of the incentive to stay very narrow and tall, as well as going extremely wide and flat. We can argue all we want that religion etc. etc. makes it possible to go very wide, but question remains: Why would one want to do that, with the new mechanisms introduced?

It will be interesting to see if this will indeed reduce to always ending up medium size - if that is the case, it is actually a bit sad, since game will then have lost some of its dynamics.

 

[ds61514]

A few policies were less useful, but you still had extremely beneficial ones and 10-20 more unlocked than any opponent playing expansively. Now with 10% cost per city instead of 30% a 8-10 city empire can unlock almost as many as a small one... it's kind of pointless to stay small

Reasons for staying small compared to Civ V release:

1. Flank protection
2. National Wonders
3. Lower happiness/resource
4. Weaker library, which means you need Unis to unlock more research power.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Without going into the details of all the arguments here, it does seem like OP has a point that they've taken away much of the incentive to stay very narrow and tall, as well as going extremely wide and flat. We can argue all we want that religion etc. etc. makes it possible to go very wide, but question remains: Why would one want to do that, with the new mechanisms introduced?

It will be interesting to see if this will indeed reduce to always ending up medium size - if that is the case, it is actually a bit sad, since game will then have lost some of its dynamics.

I think what they have done is taken away both incentive AND penalty

ie
social policies...
lower cost: 30% reduced to 10%
lower reward: cultural building reduced significantly in output

Gold..
lower output per city: less gold from terrain. more from trade routes (which are fixed per civ

Tourism.. new system
primary source of tourism=GWAM
source of GWAM= "national wonder"s that don't cost extra for mor cities or require any buildings
exactly equal wide or tall...

So overall that means that you are more flexible... you can easily go wide OR stay tall. depending on other situations of the exact city (is that particular city spot worth it...your # of cities matters less than that individual spot.

Note: they did introduce a science penalty for going wide

 

[black213]

Plus, with Poland's Solidarity, they would've been OP and probably make the Utopia Project in the Modern era

I can finish utopia in modern era just fine...

 

[Gyra Solune]

I agree with the above, flexibility is the key here. Before, the size of your empire correlated to your victory - if you wanted to go culture, you had to be small since the penalty on social policies for expanding was crippling. If you wanted to go science, you had to be wide because you get way more science. If you wanted to go diplomacy, you had to be mid-sized for maximum gold output with minimal infrastructure costs. If you wanted to go domination, you inevitably ended up with a few core cities and a massive puppet empire.

Now empires of any size are competitive for any victory. The science per city cost means ICS doesn't rocket you through the ages despite not even having libraries. The newer culture victory means larger empires can put out tourism just as well as smaller ones, and social policy costs to get there are lowered. Revamped diplomacy means diplomatic victory is actually diplomatic and not based on bribery. War...is war, who knows how one's empire will end up there.

Now, expansion is based on one thing - if it is beneficial to expand there in the here and now. In retrospect, it makes absolutely no sense that the settling of cities would be determined by an empire's plan of action thousands of years in the future. That's not how history worked. People expanded for more resources, opportunities, and discovery, not dependent on if they wanted to make a giant metaphorical pyramid or the progress of their hypothetical space program in a few millennia. No, you make cities because there's a good place to build a city that would give you what you could use right about now. Victory is now based on strategy and tactics, using what you have to greater means, and not just harvesting enough Win Progress Points from the ground.

 

[SamBC]

Was the per city policy cost increase ever 30%? I thought it was 15% (standard speed and size) before.

 

[Svest]

The incentive in staying small while going for a culture/tourism victory is simple. There is no real advantage to having a large number of cities for this victory condition, so any resources spent on expansion are essentially wasted. They just made it so that culture victory is no longer impossible if you did expand a bit. This actually increases your options. By staying small you will probably win sooner, but by expanding some you will probably be safer.

Also there is absolutely nothing stopping you from expanding to a ton of cities. It is very possible to keep a large wide empire happy. You just can't do it the same was as in the original CiV. You have to sacrifice a lot to do it, but if you can manage it without getting killed you can have a huge advantage in the late game.

 

[Ryoga]

tourism victory isn't culture...

Quite debatable. It's like saying that policies aren't culture.
Both tourism and policies are directly related to your culture.

also there is nothing you can do to prevent someone else from making culture, especially if your empire is smaller

That's the other way around.
In Vanilla you had absolutely no way to stop a civ from achieving a cultural victory apart from conquering them or beating them to the victory race.

In BNW you have another option: "have more culture than their tourism".
As long as they can't become influential with you, they cannot win a cultural victory.

So while in Vanilla if you were pursuing a diplomatic victory you had to DoW and eliminate a civ to stop them from building the Utopia, here in BNW you have a perfectly peaceful option.

Was the per city policy cost increase ever 30%? I thought it was 15% (standard speed and size) before.

Currently it's so in Vanilla and I don't remember it being 30% ever. Perhaps it was so before a patch?


Regarding the impossibility to expand, some guys have calculated the actual loss of science for city number and it seems that you still get more science by going wide and it only becomes a problem once you go over 20 cities and only if they aren't developed.
If anything you can no longer horribly outtech everyone anymore, only have a moderate advantage and you aren't penalized with few policies as before.

 

[Biz_]

I am not disagreeing that there are more reachable victory conditions for mid-sized empires, but that there are fewer victory possibilities for anything except mid-sized empires. Against the AI you can still with few and many cities, but is anything other than mid-sized competitive?

in what situations would 4 cities ever be better than 6 or 8 (if you can hold that land)?
in what situations would you win if you grew to 30 cities but lose if you stayed at 10-15?

I know civ 5 (in 2010) was full of those situations...

How is a smaller empire more effective at forcing a tourism victory than a larger one? I'm not saying the extra cities are required, but you get more of pretty much everything when you do make them... The key (against good opponents) seems to be in denying enemy culture, which you simply do not have the strength to do with a small empire.

Yeah, preventing a cultural victory is easier, but mid-sized empires are capable of that, if not ideal for it...

The full flexibility of mid-sized empires eliminates some of the strategic depth because your choice for empire growth matters less and less. If you just find "a good place to build a city that would give you what you could use right about now" then I feel many tough choices and interesting decisions are lost...


about vanilla policy cost, I don't think it was exactly 30% because the numbers were rounded to 5, but I think someone calculated that it was close to that or something. The point is that you literally could not compete in policy count with a small empire, whereas now you can get much closer or even pull ahead as the game goes on if you stay mid-size