[GS] Playing tall revisited

[acluewithout]

As an aside I know as an engineer it's extremely difficult to not over design something to exactly solve the problem at hand. I also know in a game like civ the optimal numerical balance could be achieved with enough modifers, but I personally feel that takes away from the game aspect for many people. Hence I do try to be quite measured in discussions where changing things comes up.
(No criticism leveled, just my personal philosophy!)

As they say in Civ5, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Agreed. A lot. Hopefully I manage to be circumspect as well.

I’m also conscious that FXS often buff or nerf stuff in ways different to how people on these forums suggested, and FXS’s tweaks often end up much better overall (IMO).

Balancing this game must be tricky given how many moving parts there are, FXSs desire to not make game breaking changes which therefore encourages a fairly conservative approach, and that FXS must factor in bedding in existing changes and upcoming planned game developments (eg one reason they took so long to buff production might have been because they knew they were introducing power and wanted to see how that works first).

Personally, I generally like how yields work, including the balance between districts, buildings and specialists (particularly after the June patch). I think Governors are good, but as they currently work don’t quite lead to players having a “reasonable” number of big pop cities; I think the +50% for 10 Pop cards are a bit counterproductive to fun games; and I think the balance of buildings v specialists are a bit off. Beyond that, I’m not convinced I have any better perspective, insight or ideas than anyone else. And I also think we’ll likely get a third expansion and some of these issues could end up irrelevant in 4 months time because the base game is so different (again).

Would you mind sharing your 'house rule' in detail? I would like to implement it as a starting point - especially as you have found positive effects already.


[Edit: quote in signature about perfection: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes, 1939]
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Basically, my main rules are (1) no more than 3 Campuses before turn 150, (2) no more than 8 cities on my starting continent before turn 100, and no more than 12 on my starting continent ever (overseas colonies are unrestricted), (3) I can trade with other Civs but can’t negotiate - I either reject or just take the terms I’m offered (unless terms I’m offered are crazy favourable to me, then I reject), (4) no eliminating Civs - I can take Cities (subject to Rule 1), but can’t take the Final City.

District placement, chopping, troll cities, giving cities back for grievances, unit rushing, selling all my luxuries, eureka hunting, basically everything else, is totally acceptable. I used to also play with 8 ages of pace, but haven’t recently because I’m not sure it’s working.

The goal of the rules is to avoid massively out teching the AI and speeding through the tech tree generally, and avoid too much early snowball. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough.

 

[kaspergm]

Supposing such buildings had a primary benefit of per pop yield...
The difference in output for having a size X city work all specialists vs not becomes enormous if you give them both yield + %, because that bonus percent affects the pop output. This is where you have to be careful not to introduce too much science to the game. It's just very deterministic if, for sake of argument, say, the research lab just grants a 20% boost, and scientists give +3. Then you know, as a game designer, the level of "hard science" a city can produce if the player really focuses it, while leaving some room for "soft science" growth from citizen increases. That's essentially how the game is set up now with flat yields and the pop output. It also generally makes things complex because other specialists don't have the upside of a big pool of per pop yield to multiply, for example merchants or priests. I think that there is something to be said for having simple and clean game systems, which civ6 has many of.

I agree that a good solution needs to have some control on the yield you can get from each district and building. That was a problem in Civ5, because stacking open percentage modifiers with no cap really allowed you to concentrate everything in a few big cities and have massive yields from those, which was not healthy.

I do think Civ6 has an inbuild frame for a controlled per-citizen yield. Here I'm referring to how the power system works: You have an available amount of power, and hence you can only cover a limited number of buildings. However, once all buildings are served, you don't get additional benefits from spamming more power. That's why I suggest a similar system for campuses (and other districts): Each building can serve a limited number of people within a radius. Whether that number be 10, 15, 20 or some other number - or maybe even increase at certain points or with certain policies - I'll leave open. The point is, that way you could have a campus district serve several smaller cities with few citizens in each, or one big city with many citizens. Once those citizens are served, you'll not gain further yields from spamming more campus districts (apart perhaps from minor placement yields) until cities are growing larger, increases demand for capacity. That would give a more balanced tall vs. wide approach imo., because "narrow and tall" will be equal to "wide and low" (because total number of citizens is equal), but of course "wide and tall" will and should trump either of the others.

 

[Ownsya]

I agree that a good solution needs to have some control on the yield you can get from each district and building. That was a problem in Civ5, because stacking open percentage modifiers with no cap really allowed you to concentrate everything in a few big cities and have massive yields from those, which was not healthy.

I do think Civ6 has an inbuild frame for a controlled per-citizen yield. Here I'm referring to how the power system works: You have an available amount of power, and hence you can only cover a limited number of buildings. However, once all buildings are served, you don't get additional benefits from spamming more power. That's why I suggest a similar system for campuses (and other districts): Each building can serve a limited number of people within a radius. Whether that number be 10, 15, 20 or some other number - or maybe even increase at certain points or with certain policies - I'll leave open. The point is, that way you could have a campus district serve several smaller cities with few citizens in each, or one big city with many citizens. Once those citizens are served, you'll not gain further yields from spamming more campus districts (apart perhaps from minor placement yields) until cities are growing larger, increases demand for capacity. That would give a more balanced tall vs. wide approach imo., because "narrow and tall" will be equal to "wide and low" (because total number of citizens is equal), but of course "wide and tall" will and should trump either of the others.

This is a beautiful idea for shifting the focus on the citizens rather than the buildings, power to the people type of thing. If I'm understanding correctly, another way of looking at this is that each citizen has potential for the various yields: science, culture, gold, faith, production. This potential gets unlocked (or improved) when the citizen is provided the right kinds of districts (campus educates, CD for markets, etc.). But each district only has a limited capacity that increases with buildings (and perhaps buildings also boost the yield/population). This idea would not only scale with population but also includes regional population so that cities are not completely independent from each other, a true sense of empire. I love it.This would be quite a radical change though and balancing it might be challenging.