Policy cost increases per city

[Thalassicus]

To put this another way...

• Peaceful empires are equally capable of a cultural victory regardless of size.
• Warlike empires are less capable of cultural victories than peaceful ones.

This was the statement that's incorrect:

large empires are now more capable of cultural victory than small empires

I gave the reason in my original reply to this statement, and will try and explain it better:

I started this thread and did most of the posting/updates in April and May. In late May I changed cultural citystates to distribute their culture to cities like maritime citystates. They boost border expansion (useful for wide empires) and improve from multipliers (useful for tall empires).

The higher per-player culture income goes, the less powerful adding new cities to the empire becomes.

When we have a high per-player culture income, new cities have a greater responsibility for increasing our total income.

• +10 when we have 100 in total is a 10% increase.
• +10 with 500 in total is a 2% increase.

It's why adding cities does not speed up policy generation for a culture victory game, even under the best possible circumstances. Each city adds a small, fixed amount of culture and cannot adequately offset its cost against the large sources of per-player culture income. Tall empires gain culture faster, and wide empires offset this with higher science that unlocks new culture sources sooner.

Let's consider a player going for a cultural victory under the best possible circumstances.

Why? That isn't the scenario you used before.

If we can't do something in the best possible situation, then we never can do it. Things can't get better under worse circumstances.

Spoiler :

To clarify:

These ideal circumstances are just the opposite; your "ideal" circumstances are those with massive amounts of culture from your original cities. If you pack enough culture into your capital from monuments, Stongehenge, etc. then yeah, your culture rate will fall as your number of cities rise.
But take the actual example you had before:
25 non-duplicatable culture.
Monument + Liberty + Representation + Temple in each city. So, 0.1 policy cost modifier, 6 culture per city.

Suppose the next policy costs 500 culture with a single city. Then we have:

Number of cities Policy cost Culture per turn Number of turns per policy
1 500 31 16.12903226
2 550 37 14.86486486
3 600 43 13.95348837
4 650 49 13.26530612
5 700 55 12.72727273
6 750 61 12.29508197
7 800 67 11.94029851
8 850 73 11.64383562
9 900 79 11.39240506
10 950 85 11.17647059
11 1000 91 10.98901099
12 1050 97 10.82474227
13 1100 103 10.67961165
14 1150 109 10.55045872
15 1200 115 10.43478261

As you see, the number of turns per policy is *decreasing*. At 10 cities, the number of turns per policy is only 70% of that of what it is with 1 city.

See the attached Excel sheet to tweak the numbers.

You're using data from conquest victories to make a conclusion about cultural victories. It's important to use the right data set.

The data is conquest-victory specific because it omits per-player culture from sources like cultural citystates, landmarks, world wonders, and national wonders. I haven't played enough culture games to know for sure, but I doubt a culture game could be better by avoiding sources of culture.

 

[Txurce]

It's why adding cities does not speed up policy generation for a culture victory game, even under the best possible circumstances. Each city adds a small, fixed amount of culture and cannot adequately offset its cost against the large sources of per-player culture income.

My own experience confirms this. Does anyone have specific in-game examples that contradict it?

 

[Txurce]

Hoping that this is the right thread for this dialogue:

If I build a monument and a temple in each city I acquire, my mid-game empire of 12 cities has been able to maintain a 9-turns-per-SP rate. It is not going down with each new city. And unless something has changed to cripple the cultural output of tall empires, my last culture game pre-patch had a rate of as low as 3-turns-per-policy.

 

[SlightlyMad]

So your own experience contradicts your own experience, or am I misreading something here?

edit: actually, I think I get it and see the fundamental misunderstanding here. It sounds like we all agree that adding cities does almost nothing to slow down policy generation, but merely works to balance itself out so as not to increase the SP rate.

 

[Txurce]

So your own experience contradicts your own experience, or am I misreading something here?

You're not being clear regarding your question - that's for sure!

 

[SlightlyMad]

Sorry, I just edited my post because I think I understand the disconnect now. So while it's certainly possible for your empire to be in a state such that adding additional cities will increase the SP rate, Thal's argument is that doesn't really matter because if you're going for a cultural victory you'll have enough per-civ (as opposed to per-city) culture that you'll never be in that state.

Additionally, the point is to try to balance it such that an additional city is possible to break-even with that generation, even though it won't hurt. A fair amount of effort (many building purchases) will be required to get the city to that point though, which hopefully balances out with the other benefits you'd receive from the additional city.

So the ultimate point is that if you want to go for a cultural victory, it's reachable after more or less the same number of turns in either a tall or wide empire, assuming you always employ an optimal strategy (which is presumably more difficult in a wide empire but still entirely possible).

 

[Txurce]

Sorry, I just edited my post because I think I understand the disconnect now. So while it's certainly possible for your empire to be in a state such that adding additional cities will increase the SP rate, Thal's argument is that doesn't really matter because if you're going for a cultural victory you'll have enough per-civ (as opposed to per-city) culture that you'll never be in that state.

Additionally, the point is to try to balance it such that an additional city is possible to break-even with that generation, even though it won't hurt. A fair amount of effort (many building purchases) will be required to get the city to that point though, which hopefully balances out with the other benefits you'd receive from the additional city.

So the ultimate point is that if you want to go for a cultural victory, it's reachable after more or less the same number of turns in either a tall or wide empire, assuming you always employ an optimal strategy (which is presumably more difficult in a wide empire but still entirely possible).

Pretty much, yes. Adding cities without adding culture buildings will increase your culture rate - but it's possible to win a cultural victory with a wide empire, if you invest sufficiently in cultural buildings, SP's and CS. But based on my pre-patch experience, a tall empire can still outperform a wide one in practice.

 

[Thalassicus]

So while it's certainly possible for your empire to be in a state such that adding additional cities will increase the SP rate, Thal's argument is that doesn't really matter because if you're going for a cultural victory you'll have enough per-civ (as opposed to per-city) culture that you'll never be in that state.

Additionally, the point is to try to balance it such that an additional city is possible to break-even with that generation, even though it won't hurt. A fair amount of effort (many building purchases) will be required to get the city to that point though, which hopefully balances out with the other benefits you'd receive from the additional city.

So the ultimate point is that if you want to go for a cultural victory, it's reachable after more or less the same number of turns in either a tall or wide empire, assuming you always employ an optimal strategy (which is presumably more difficult in a wide empire but still entirely possible).

Yep. Basically my goal is a sweet spot where people can pursue a culture victory with wide or tall empires, just in different ways. The wide empire researches faster, while the tall empire gets policies more easily.

I'd like to emphasize again this only applies to peaceful empires. Even with the old spoils effect of culture from city capture, I've always felt a peaceful game is stronger for culture victories than militaristic games. Just being at war with someone cuts out 10-20% from a potential research agreement. Warfare also sours diplomatic opinions from leaders, which makes it even harder to get those agreements. The discussion between Stalker0 and I at the start of the thread is some anecdotal evidence to support this.

 

[Thalassicus]

I've updated the original post with the latest information about how policy costs work.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

@OP: the fact that there's 3 archetypes and 2 of those need happiness could be improved imho. it would be great if the mod could diversify more between Conqueror Tall and Conqueror Wide playstyles, and between those and Peaceful Wide

 

[Thalassicus]

That's a reasonable suggestion, and I'll keep it in mind when considering game design in the weeks ahead.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

nice! you could actually even have a 6 archetype system by adding OCC and ICS to the two extremes