[GS] Playing tall revisited

[kaspergm]

I guess this maybe isn't specifically what you are saying; but why should there be a happiness penalty? If one decides to promote tall or punish wide surely coming up with a thematic reason that doesn't annoy people is a good idea. Global happiness was jarring as it made no sense. Why should they be unhappy (on average, and throughout history) that our nation has more territory?

Well I agree with you so far that I don't think unhappiness should target wide specifically, I just think unhappiness does not have enough impact, period.

 

[Francel]

Hey thanks to everyone who replied.

I want to clarify, I'm talking a mod, not a patch. I don't want to change anything for anyone who likes the way it is.

Why do I like tall versus wide? Maybe it's a habit from Civ V and the days of Venice/OCC. Partly though it's just not as fun for me to have to manage a large number of cities and it takes a lot longer than 3-6 cities. I like to play on the smaller maps to begin with, and pack in extra civs and city states. I feel like the cities start to lose charm, character, and uniqueness past a certain point and you just keep tacking more on. I also don't like to have to go to war to get more territory. Sometimes I just feel like playing peaceful.

I'd rather build up my core and do my thing than have to go out, keep building cities, take turf, and become the equivalent of HPV. That's just me. If you don't like to play the way I do, that's cool, I respect that.

 

[nzcamel]

"Personally, I HATE that Civ rules that "more is better". I mean, of course countries like China, Russia and the US have always been the best in the world when it comes to production, research, culture, entertainment, religion, etc. Let's forget all these countries like Korea, Japan, or Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands that are at least half the size of the aforementioned countries, and are doing much better on some of the aspects above.

I wish you'd be rewarded for developing a succesful civ, not a large civ. Currently I'm playing a game where I, by sheer luck, have enough space to develop. Standard map, and I have about 20 cities where the opponents have about half. I'm doing twice as good, even though almost all my cities are relatively unhappy.

But were there a head to head between a huge country and a smaller country, the huge country will win 9 times out of 10. Yes, it isn't that simple; but the desire for a few cities to compete on an equal footing with lots isn't realistic.

Increase the value of large cities would not help playing small (what people here calls tall) relative stronger as a large empire can still have as large cities and more of them.

Well, yes and no. Settlers are not cheap and (without the Steward) remove a population. I benefits should increase with population, and rather than scale down, should gradually scale up. But sure - there is no reason that a nation with more cities shouldn't be able to grow big cities too.

The problem is that large cities are currently penalised. There is at least one veteran player on this board who intentionally limits their cities to 10 pop because beyond that the costs for them at least) outweigh the benefits.

Sure, a wide empire can eventually get all their cities to be large and so eventually have it both wide and tall. But really that should be an investment. At the moment there is just little reason to specifically go tall. Wide but not tall empires can crank out units pretty quickly, need less amenities per pop, plus are an investment in the future, as you said. There need to be more advantages to going tall.

The logical step is to make tall cities the quick, rush type the strategy, then have wide be the long term pay off strategy where it takes a while to get there (you have to have small cities as you use resources to create more cities rather than growing the ones you already have) but eventually you get many large cities.
In the short term, going tall would be best because you get those perks and maybe overwhelm those who are going wide. In the long run, wide isnbetter because eventually you'll have double or treble the number of cities each of a rough parity to the cities of the tall empire, giving a strong advantage there.

I don't know all the answers, but it makes little sense to me that I should be seeking to limiting my city sizes in order to get the best stats, nor that there isna "right way" and a "wrong way" to do it.

I don't see significant advantage in "limiting" your city size beyond if you are losing pop creating settlers. In fact smaller cities will not crank out the production required to win science victories among other things.

The price of growing pops is polynomical while the benefits of pops is linear (at a dimishing rate) which mean you pay more and more and gain less and less which mean the payback time of growth eventually get too long to make sense. Many other games have more encouragement to grow cities because the buildings have % yields instead which mean the value of the buildings are directly linked to the size of the city but that system was for some reason abandoned for civilization vi. If buildings was returned to % yields or yield per pop, you would see large cities make a return.

If a library gave 0.25 science per population in the city instead of 2 science and University gave 0.5 science per population instead of 5 science you would no longer see pop 4 or 7 or 10 cities being that good anymore.

I think Denkt's take here is a better way of looking at improving the situation without making the game counter intuitive.

Why do I like tall versus wide? Maybe it's a habit from Civ V and the days of Venice/OCC. Partly though it's just not as fun for me to have to manage a large number of cities and it takes a lot longer than 3-6 cities. I like to play on the smaller maps to begin with, and pack in extra civs and city states. I feel like the cities start to lose charm, character, and uniqueness past a certain point and you just keep tacking more on.

can understand wanting to have a small nation...but are there possibly better games for that than Civilization? And in part you have answered your own problem - by playing on smaller maps, you limit the space that can be settled.

I also don't like to have to go to war to get more territory. Sometimes I just feel like playing peaceful.

So do the reverse and play on a large map with fewer Civs? And again...the game is Civilization. No one gets to just be peaceful without any ability to defend themselves. Switzerland has remained neutral for a very long time thanks to a mix of difficult terrain and a well trained population. Civ offers you options to simulate that!

I'd rather build up my core and do my thing than have to go out, keep building cities, take turf, and become the equivalent of HPV. That's just me. If you don't like to play the way I do, that's cool, I respect that.

You don't have to do these things; but it does depend on how you play. Have you tried doing a game with zero other Civs? Does it allow that sandbox that it sounds like you would like?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I want to clarify, I'm talking a mod, not a patch. I don't want to change anything for anyone who likes the way it is.

I think alot of people want to see a change from the optimal way to play being to destroy nature and build small villages everywhere without any tile improvements and play super aggresively. At that Point you are not really building a civilization, simply destroying Everything.

Also it make Little sense that a library and other builidngs are as productive in a small village than in a large metropolis.

 

[Victoria]

the optimal way to play being to destroy nature and build small villages everywhere without any tile improvements and play super aggresively. At that Point you are not really building a civilization, simply destroying Everything.

Sounds like the human race to me

 

[Archon_Wing]

I want to clarify, I'm talking a mod, not a patch. I don't want to change anything for anyone who likes the way it is.

Wel, my point was to show that it is very possible in the current game. I don't really think that the t176 6 city cv would have really been that much better even if I did, at least not enough to care. While an outlier, I actually don't really think tall is unviable. It is just not as good as tall. A lot of people have been parroting the same crap since vanilla when the game has changed.

Now could there be more incentive to build bigger cities. Probably

 

[qadams]

Sounds like the human race to me

We'll get cited for being OT, but you're absolutely right.

 

[steveg700]

Building settlers youself do get quite expensive and can leave you with alot of underdeveloped cities. The key is military conquest since it allow you gain very developed cities for maybe less cost than actually founding the cities your self.

There is no real drawback to having large cities either other than the cost it takes to build them up and grow them. You can have like 50 cities each being 30+ population if you want to each with all districts that it can build.

Well, conquest is the lazy man's way of playing Civ VI, since it is essentially an exploit of AI weakness. It's an exploit that's unavoidable and often fun, but it's a cheap style of play with a low skill ceiling.

Chopping has been nerfed. And yes, conquest is very strong for value but that's why it's a separate issue-- we can't make a game revolving around your opponents simply throwing the game.

That's perhaps a more diplomatic way of putting it, I suppose.

But I think there are many cases where building up instead of out is more practical for victory. Too many people are still stuck in Vanilla.

Well, a lot of Civ VI's mechanisms not only leave sprawling unchecked, they encourage the hell out of it. The whole concept of districts and adjacency bonuses is a lauded innovation that I"m sure most here would advocate for maintaining when a Civ 7 eventually shows up. But districts allow cities can be "front-loaded" with bonuses. You can get more out of your adjacency bonus than out of your buildings, and indeed I often am just content to leave a a +5 mountain campus without a library for a good while. Sure, CS' make'em worthwhile, but CS's get gobbled up so aggressively by sore-loser civ's that begrudge rivals a suzerain bonus that it's often necessary to luck into one close enough to protect.

 

[Francel]

But were there a head to head between a huge country and a smaller country, the huge country will win 9 times out of 10. Yes, it isn't that simple; but the desire for a few cities to compete on an equal footing with lots isn't realistic.



Well, yes and no. Settlers are not cheap and (without the Steward) remove a population. I benefits should increase with population, and rather than scale down, should gradually scale up. But sure - there is no reason that a nation with more cities shouldn't be able to grow big cities too.



I don't see significant advantage in "limiting" your city size beyond if you are losing pop creating settlers. In fact smaller cities will not crank out the production required to win science victories among other things.



I think Denkt's take here is a better way of looking at improving the situation without making the game counter intuitive.



can understand wanting to have a small nation...but are there possibly better games for that than Civilization? And in part you have answered your own problem - by playing on smaller maps, you limit the space that can be settled.



So do the reverse and play on a large map with fewer Civs? And again...the game is Civilization. No one gets to just be peaceful without any ability to defend themselves. Switzerland has remained neutral for a very long time thanks to a mix of difficult terrain and a well trained population. Civ offers you options to simulate that!



You don't have to do these things; but it does depend on how you play. Have you tried doing a game with zero other Civs? Does it allow that sandbox that it sounds like you would like?

I appreciate your input.

I don't claim to be an expert - I feel somewhat nervous posting here because I am not an expert.

My impression is that in Civ V "tall" could be just as good as "wide" with the policy tree and culture costs. In Civ VI, "wide" just seems better. That makes sense, I suppose.

Still, even with the advantages of wide play, tall wouldn't be so bad, I feel, if building large quantities of wonders didn't gobble up the tiles. My favorite part of Civ V was building the grandest cities possible. Well, this isn't nearly as feasible.

Maybe giving an option to put wonders in cities instead of on tiles would make a difference.

These are just my lowly casual impressions.


One more thought: Tall in civ v had a much easier time winning on immortal/deity, right? Seems like Civ VI you really need more cities. Or is that just me?

 

[Scaramanga]

Going "wide" really means taking over other civs' tall empires. The disadvantage being more weariness and diplomatic hits. If you went tall for more population and developed districts instead of spamming settlers you would end up with different bonuses like more great people from district buildings. Maybe not better results in all cases because it depends who you're playing as.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Sure, CS' make'em worthwhile, but CS's get gobbled up so aggressively by sore-loser civ's that begrudge rivals a suzerain bonus that it's often necessary to luck into one close enough to protect.

You can always liberate them if they fall. If you do decide to stay passive and ignore what happens on the map, then you just have to live with the consequences.

Granted, there's flaws with CS's themselves (you should not be able to attack an allied CS) and notifications are terrible. But that's an issue with diplomacy.

 

[nzcamel]

I think alot of people want to see a change from the optimal way to play being to destroy nature and build small villages everywhere without any tile improvements and play super aggresively. At that Point you are not really building a civilization, simply destroying Everything.

Sounds like the human race to me

What Victoria said. The name of the game, yet again, is Civilization. There has not been a single civilization that hasn't become dominant via using the resources available to them.

Also it make Little sense that a library and other builidngs are as productive in a small village than in a large metropolis.

Well, a lot of Civ VI's mechanisms not only leave sprawling unchecked, they encourage the hell out of it. The whole concept of districts and adjacency bonuses is a lauded innovation that I"m sure most here would advocate for maintaining when a Civ 7 eventually shows up. But districts allow cities can be "front-loaded" with bonuses. You can get more out of your adjacency bonus than out of your buildings, and indeed I often am just content to leave a a +5 mountain campus without a library for a good while. Sure, CS' make'em worthwhile, but CS's get gobbled up so aggressively by sore-loser civ's that begrudge rivals a suzerain bonus that it's often necessary to luck into one close enough to protect.

I think you guys are both onto something here - what if your library can add x amount of science, but that is still population dependent? Either it adds, say, 4 science, but only 1 at 2 pop, 2 at 4 pop, 3 at 6 pop, and the whole 4 only at 8 pop. University additions would be on higher populations only. Or they add X% per population, possibly with no cap?
And something similar could be done with district adjacency.

My impression is that in Civ V "tall" could be just as good as "wide" with the policy tree and culture costs. In Civ VI, "wide" just seems better. That makes sense, I suppose.

Still, even with the advantages of wide play, tall wouldn't be so bad, I feel, if building large quantities of wonders didn't gobble up the tiles. My favorite part of Civ V was building the grandest cities possible. Well, this isn't nearly as feasible.
Maybe giving an option to put wonders in cities instead of on tiles would make a difference.

Yes, you're right re Civ V; because in that version they artificially restrained wide in ways that were jarring; especially for a 4X game.

Again, re the wonders using a tile, I get how more cities makes that easier as it is a lost tile; but again, in previous versions of Civ at higher levels players had to give up on ever building most of the wonders. With the tile placement in VI it does allow more wonders being built by the human player even on deity.

 

[Timewarp]

I think alot of people want to see a change from the optimal way to play being to destroy nature and build small villages everywhere without any tile improvements and play super aggresively. At that Point you are not really building a civilization, simply destroying Everything.

Also it make Little sense that a library and other builidngs are as productive in a small village than in a large metropolis.

I could never quite place quite why I feel uneasy about a lot of the mechanics. You nailed it perfectly. Even global warming, at least in the "Play CIV VI on Deity" videos, shows global warming as a positive way to win quicker as you lose a little, but your enemies lose a lot.

And I am learning that the AI does a REALLY REALLY poor job of defending itself. My current game (just playing on King), I was boxed in to just 3 cities. Built up a small but diverse army - siege towers, the two Alexander UI units, catapults, crossbows, and attacked nearby Mongolia. Completely demolished them with a fairly small force. In the meantime, in an emergency situation, Canada joined Mongolia, and my very small defense force managed to take Canada out as well. Their most effective defensive unit was a Quadrienne (the boat) that was in a lake that took out a few support units because I did not pay enough attention to reinforcements traveling up the road.

Only 1 city out of them all provided even the least amount of resistance. And now the rest of the game revolves around taking my army to wherever the other civs are and taking their cities, which probably will be just as easy. I have Canada's religion, so presumably I don't have to worry about losing a religious war by accident.

One of the Deity posters wrote about winning as Alexander: beeline to the UI techs, build the UI units, and attack everything around. Don't build barracks, which means not building your special building. Build military, take over everything in site, and use captured buildings and districts to maintain your "civilization". Oh yeah, be sure to pillage each tile before taking new cities along the way to maximize what you get from your attacks.

 

[nzcamel]

I could never quite place quite why I feel uneasy about a lot of the mechanics. You nailed it perfectly.

I suspect that history makes you feel uneasy too then. Which no doubt parts of it should.

 

[Timewarp]

I suspect that history makes you feel uneasy too then. Which no doubt parts of it should.

Well much of it sure isn't pretty. It would be ok by me, though, if the game sugar coated history at least a little bit.

On a practical note, although domination requires one civilization to militarily conquer all other civilizations, in the real world, nothing even close to this has ever happened. The price of maintaining even a moderately big empire ended up being just too high. Another difference between Civ VI and reality is that, in Civ VI, conquered civilizations are permanently eliminated. In the real world, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, and Italy all have previously been conquered. And they are all in existence today.

 

[Sostratus]

Citizens innately produce 0.5 science and 0.5 culture each. For tall to be "viable" (not absolutely steamrolled) you ultimately need to move away from flat bonuses in research resources ( ,) towards modifying per citizen values.
This would be similar to how civ5's science buildings functioned.

The other side would be that specialists need to produce more; this way, having additional population will allow a city to invest in specialists, giving it a further relative advantage for its configuration of pops (IE, fewer larger cities vs more smaller ones.)
This is because even if you totally swapped out flat science/culture for giving bonuses to citizen yields, you'd just be tying output to total empire population. And wide empires can grow more pops. So you need to push from flat with pops (current) to linear with pops (scaling per-citizen value) to slightly supra-linear. Going fully exponential like civ5 would probably be overkill. I'd probably even suggest keeping the library/amphi flat +2.

~~~~~
Anyways, I firmly have believed since sometime around 2013 that civ empires should be balanced based on how many citizens they have in them, where the empire's costs and penalties are tied to how many mouths you have to feed and please. Then players have freedom to figure out how to apportion these people within their country. This is because the civ economy has been tied to population doing things since forever, and real empires have always struggled to provide for their people. The motto of balance would be: "A great empire, if you can keep it."

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Ok, for those who are saying 'a tall empire doesn't reflect history well enough' or 'lots of cities should always be best because it is realistic'

This is a game. It is not reality. There are many things in Civ (and all games) that are not realistic. Moving units around on a mechanical hex based grid is not realistic, but games are made up of many mechanics. In this case, those mechanics, I hope, are attempts to make a fun Strategy game at its core. So, first we have to answer what 'fun strategy' is...

I think that most people would agree that in Civ, 'fun' would involve a diverse range of strategic options. It is possible that I am wrong here, and perhaps strategic diversity isn't important at all, maybe things like immersion/pace/theme/controls/sound etc are more important. But I think we can all agree that Strategy is at least 'up there'.

If this is the case, then imo Civ6 struggles to achieve the same Strategic Diversity that other previous strategy games have offered in the past. To me Strategic Diversity is about having options, different ways to approach the game with grand strategy in mind. Now Civ6 does have lots of small tactical equations to solve, building small combos (think adjacency bonuses coupled with 100% adjacency policy cards) Where should I place this district to maximise my yields? What shall I prioritise building to maximise that eureka boost? This is enough to carry the game for some people, but for others we need more grand strategy options, simple tactics is not enough.

Wide vs tall is just one aspect of this, but it is an important player in this strategic depth discussion. I agree with the OP that it isn't present here, and I wish it was.

I have written another thread about all of this that got moved to the 'ideas and suggestions' forum:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/improving-civ6s-strategic-depth.650084/#post-15554355

 

[cvb]

the optimal way to play being to destroy nature and build small villages everywhere

Sounds like the human race to me

No, we are not that unique; eg. Yeast does the same: just peing everything in their direct environment and growing unhampered until all essential resources (sugar) are eaten. Then stop abruptly.

It has to be shown, that 'highly evolved' lifeforms can perform better. (Bacteria at least seem to have the advantage of being able to travel on tiny rocks through space alive for many years ... after the next large asteroid has blown up the biosphere)

.

 

[Vandlys]

But were there a head to head between a huge country and a smaller country, the huge country will win 9 times out of 10. Yes, it isn't that simple; but the desire for a few cities to compete on an equal footing with lots isn't realistic.

Sorry, but what do you consider a "head to head"? Yes, if you have a country like the US versus a country like Denmark to compete in a Space Race, without any outside interference, the US would obviously win. But do a happiness poll in Sweden vs Nigeria (10 million vs 200 million), or a cancer research project in Norway vs North Korea (5 million vs 25 million), and then what?

In terms of Civ it feels like you are purely talking about war. But if you look at a real life situation comparing Nigeria vs Sweden, I'd say on production, amenities, science, culture, gold, Sweden is doing better.

So, to quote you again "the desire for a few cities to compete on an equal footing with lots isn't realistic". Yes it is. To compare smaller countries to larger countries of exact equal science, production, gold, culture, amenities, per capita, and then have them on equal footing; that's not realistic. But that's not the point here. The point is that in Civ VI, you can't be a small country that's much better off than a large country, purely because you have a ton of fossil fuels (Norway, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, vs Nigeria, North Korea, Afghanistan). And -that- is unrealistic.

 

[kaspergm]

Going "wide" really means taking over other civs' tall empires. The disadvantage being more weariness and diplomatic hits. If you went tall for more population and developed districts instead of spamming settlers you would end up with different bonuses like more great people from district buildings. Maybe not better results in all cases because it depends who you're playing as.

That is how it should be, but like pointed out also by Sostratus above, really it's not. Because all yields in Civ6 are flat yields, in reality a tall city does not give you more of those yields. A pop 1 city with a fully developed Theatre district gives you the same yields - both actual yields and GPP - as a fully developed Theatre District in a pop 30 city. Clearly something is wrong here, both in terms of logic/realism and in terms of game design. Most likely they went down this design path to go away from the results of Civ5, where we were in the opposite boat and tall trumped wide, but by now it seems clear to me that the best approach probably lies somewhere in between: Either a mix of flat yields and percent/per population yields or an expansion of Civ6's idea of area coverage.

Personally, I'd like to see the AOE applied not only to IZ and EC, but also to things like Campus and Theatre District. The way this could work would be:

Campus District: Serves cities within a radius of 6 hexes (just to stick to that number for the sake of the thought experiment)

• Tier 1 buildings
  • Library: Provides +1 science and +1 culture and increases science and culture pr. population by +0.1. Can hold one great work of writing. Can serve up to 10 citizens.
  • Parochial School: Provides +1 science and +1 faith and increase science and faith pr. population by +0.1. Religious pressure from city doubles, foreign religious pressure halved. Can serve up to 10 citizens.
• Tier 2 buildings
  • University: Provides +2 science and increases science pr. population by +0.2. Can hold two great works of writing and two specialists. Can serve up to 20 citizens.
  • Observatory: Provides +1 science from each adjacent mountain and increases science from specialists by +1. Can hold two specialists.
• Tier 3 buildings
  • Public School: Increases science pr. population by +0.2. Can serve up to 20 citizens. Additionally provides +1 amenities in local city.
    
  • Research Lab: Provides +3 science and increases science from specialists by +2. Can hold three specialists.

Now these numbers are just thrown randomly down, but the idea here would be to create a system where you can't just spam tiny cities with campus districts for linear growth, and on the other hand, one campus district can't just serve an infinite number of citizens when cities grow big, so once your empire becomes sufficiently tall, you need to build more campus districts - possibly even more in the same city - to cover citizen numbers.