Per City Science Penalty

[Olodune]

The current version of Civ 5 BNW has a per city science penalty. (5% additive penalty per city on a Standard map).

What I wasn't sure about was exactly when this is applied, so I did some tests.

Lets assume we have a 10 city empire, see if you know the penalty in each of these cases I wasn't sure about a couple of them.

Conquest Section

1. I conquer a city (#11) and immediately puppet the city, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

11 cities

2. I conquer a city (#11) and immediately raze the city, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

10 cities

3. I conquer a city (#11) and immediately annex the city, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

11 cities

4. I conquer a city (#11) and annex, enter the city screen, and choose raze, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

11 cities

5. I conquer a city (#11) and puppet, then trade the city to an AI, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

11 cities

6. I conquer a city (#11) and raze, then trade the city to an AI, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

10 cities

6A. I conquer a city (#11) and raze, then stop razing the city in the city screen, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

11 cities

Settling Section


7. I trade a city (#10) to an AI, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

10 cities

8. I settle a city (#11) then trade a different city to an AI, what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

11 cities

9. I trade a city (#10) then settle a new city(#10), what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

10 cities

10. I trade two cities (#9, #10) then settle a different (#9), what are your research costs based on?

Spoiler :

10 cities

TLDR: The research penalty seems to be a ratchet function that increases based on the largest number of cities you have founded/annexed/puppeted at any given time in the game up to this point.

 

[stormtrooper412]

If you capture a city and then sell it to an AI, will the tech cost switch back to 10 the next turn or will it remain locked at 11 until a different trigger is triggered?

 

[Olodune]

The penalty is really only a problem for the AI. For the human player knowing the penalty mechanics is typically just about optimizing play a little.

(And preventing late expands from ever being useful).

I'm more annoyed with how long Resistance lasts. Capturing a large capital on Deity takes too long to pay off.

I also wish the happiness penalty for razing a city was actually a bonus That way I wouldn't have to give so many cities to an irrelevant AI in late game domination games.

 

[Olodune]

If you capture a city and then sell it to an AI, will the tech cost switch back to 10 the next turn or will it remain locked at 11 until a different trigger is triggered?

As far as I can tell with testing there is no way to reduce the penalty, but I haven't checked the SDK.

 

[joncnunn]

As far as I can tell with testing there is no way to reduce the penalty, but I haven't checked the SDK.

The per city science penalty was largely borrowed from the per city culture penalty, and indeed won't go back down if you sell cities or lose them in combat.
However, this means if you lose a city in combat and take it right back that costs won't go up.

 

[Acken]

Well I already knew that

Basically the game puts to players a "Number of city founded/acquired". Let's call it N which can only increase. The number of cities you currently have is n.
When you puppet/found/annex if n<N then N doesn't increase else it increases by 1.

The only exception is immediately razing. In that case the game doesn't increase N by 1 (unless you stop razing).

If anyone finds a mod to eliminate the 5% penalty, please PM me.

It's actually pretty easy. It's due to the NumCitiesTechCostMod in table Worlds (Civ5Worlds.XML). Making a quick mod just changing the value to 0 for all size should be pretty easy.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Deity AI would still ICS most likely

 

[IronfighterXXX]

The introduction of 5% science penalty per city was really dumb idea and really don't know why they did it
(ICSing wasn't good idea if I remember correctly just after first big vanilla patch).

I also remember times when seeing civ with 40+ cities was quite worrying, now you can just laugh at that backward civ

 

[consentient]

Deity AI would still ICS most likely

Of course, but would they be any better? Like Ironfighter says, they can sometimes stagnate their science with too many. Already the biggest problem is the unit spam, not the science runaway. I'd like to see how the game would play out with no science penalty and less spam-cheats.

 

[phillipwyllie]

@OP:thanks for the thread, I always assumed the tech cost would go down in every case.

It would seem we have a not-so-new exploit/tactic where one can conquer a whole load of cities in which they immediately raze and gift to the AI. If done before ideologies the AI might not raze those cities. Are the HOF team aware?

 

[IronfighterXXX]

It would seem we have a not-so-new exploit/tactic where one can conquer a whole load of cities in which they immediately raze and gift to the AI. If done before ideologies the AI might not raze those cities. Are the HOF team aware?

Why would someone want to do that?

 

[peddroelm]

(And preventing late expands from ever being useful).

Late game expands can have military benefits ..

-access to critical strategic resources oil//aluminum you might be unable to trade from hostile world
-airport base to allow transferring airforce to frontline or even directly in range to fronline to bomb/nuke

And even peacetime applications

-open new pathway between oceans for trade/military use separated by 1 tile of land . (sad they didn't offer option to build maritime canals with workers like Suez/Panama (could last 20-30 turns per tile to build and cost money))

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IMO the 5% penalty is a drop in the bucket compared to the happiness and gold constraints of additional infrastructure, but it's still good to know how it works.

 

[Acken]

I think most people don't like the penalty because of what it does to the AI mostly. Spammers and conquering empire often fall very quickly behind in tech.

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Four posts moved into the new thread "No Science Per City Mod Discussion" http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=548115] in Creation & Customization