Poll: Which style is stronger in game: Tall or Wide?

[kaspergm]

As to the why...

The Community Balance Patch is an attempt to address some of the perceived imbalances with Civ 5 BNW.

One of the imbalances that has been discussed is whether Wide or Tall gameplay is currently more strongly favored in the base game, and then whether some kinds of adjustment should be done.

We have some very strong opinions on both sides...but that group is much smaller than the larger Civ 5 population.

I was hoping that this poll could give me at least some insight into whether the larger community believes there is a balance problem or not.

I will try to give my 5 cents, although I'm not a top player.

Imo. in (unmodded) BnW, tall is probably slightly stronger than wide. It's not like wide is a disaster, but for me it's a very fundamental problem that there's no real advantage in going wide, and since wide is more cumbersome in terms of managing cities and units, not to mention harder to defend due to longer borders, it seems futile to go wide - even if I find tall gameplay somewhat more boring than wide.

I think a key to understanding the problem is to look at the national wonders. It seems like National Wonders were originally intended to help tall civs keep up with (inherently stronger) wide civs, but since vanilla civ5, so many changes have been made to the game that tall no longer needs a boost, and suddenly the fact that wide civs generally are cut off from national wonders for a long time becomes deciding in the balance between the two. National College with it's massive +50 % science in the capital particularly is decisive in this regard, and while it is possible to make strategies like narrow-until-NC-then-wide, I rarely find it's worth it founding new cities at this point.

 

[historix69]

It is difficult to make a general statement, which style is stronger ... It depends very much on the map, starting positions, ressources and your personal style, how you like to play.

I prefer a balanced game which allows to win the game both ways. In Civ3 I played games where I founded 100+ cities, in Civ4 I played games were I had only 1 city and founded all religions in this holy city. Civ5 is more limited with global happiness and the heavily increasing costs for National Wonders. I tend to stick to 1-3 city until I finished all National Wonders but I don't enjoy it to leave all those nice spots unsettled. (Mankind settled every nice-looking spot on earth. However the best jobs in our time are often located in big capital cities. -> urbanisation)

Civ5 is a game with unrealistic, unnatural rules ... I like to expand both wide and tall ...

A solution would be to give the capital more weight by special capital-only buildings / boni and make additional cities less important ... then everybody can play his own style.

For realism :
Singapore is tall, China is wide ... who of them will dominate the next century? And where do you want to live?

 

[budweiser]

Yes but that is usually hard to go wider than 6 cities as a result.

In theory, if you had infinite happiness you'd expand a ton, after NC at least (due to increase costs you'd want to delay further expansion until you finish NC). Like on Settler difficulty for example. And every city would be played like a tall one, focusing on growth.

You can pretty much expand forever if you do it right. But for me, I cant see doing it until The Hermitage is up. After that, you can basically expand at will as long as you built the proper foundation.

 

[Wodhann]

The definition of "tall" here is incorrect. A "tall" empire in standard would comprise of no more than 3-4 highly populated cities. Anything more starts stepping into "wide" territory.

With that in mind, Wide is clearly a more competitive choice, if you have the skills to manage it. I don't think I've watched a single high-skill competitive game where the guy with 3 cities won over the sprawling empire of 6-7 cities. In the main game, having fewer cities is a clear handicap - you have fewer queue production lines, you have fewer resources, and you have fewer yields. Plus you're easier prey from conquering empires.

More cities means more production of everything, and with the internal route system it's not hard to get your cities up and running. With a sea trade route you can get your city from 1 to like 5 population upwards in no time.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

I play almost only competitive games (like GOTM) and in BNW the strongest strategy in terms of fastest finishes is tall + (4-6 cities). Player with more cities normally doesn't have chance (unless Ribannah )

You can pretty much expand forever if you do it right.

Yes, but what for?

 

[GoStu]

I will try to give my 5 cents, although I'm not a top player.

Imo. in (unmodded) BnW, tall is probably slightly stronger than wide. It's not like wide is a disaster, but for me it's a very fundamental problem that there's no real advantage in going wide, and since wide is more cumbersome in terms of managing cities and units, not to mention harder to defend due to longer borders, it seems futile to go wide - even if I find tall gameplay somewhat more boring than wide.

I think a key to understanding the problem is to look at the national wonders. It seems like National Wonders were originally intended to help tall civs keep up with (inherently stronger) wide civs, but since vanilla civ5, so many changes have been made to the game that tall no longer needs a boost, and suddenly the fact that wide civs generally are cut off from national wonders for a long time becomes deciding in the balance between the two. National College with it's massive +50 % science in the capital particularly is decisive in this regard, and while it is possible to make strategies like narrow-until-NC-then-wide, I rarely find it's worth it founding new cities at this point.

Get this man a cookie.

The National Wonders really hurt the whole "wide" strategy in my opinion, particularly the damned College. Focusing growth into a couple cities and then getting 50% more Science in the biggest (usually the Capital) is very very strong. Most high-level play hinges on getting this building up as fast as possible. People attempting to rapid-expand have to find ways to force a Library into the most distant fledgling cities they found, trading 1 Gold maintenance off for 1-2 beakers at most.

Lack of early-game Gold also weakens early wide play in my opinion. Tradition players are getting 4 maintenance-free Monuments (4gpt forever), and 4 maintenance-free Aqueducts, plus they don't have to spend hammers getting those buildings. Monarchy supplies early gold and free Happiness. Meanwhile, the fast-expander has to try and get roads out and maintain buildings in cities that might not produce even a single GPT. The Tall player has money to burn to fit buildings in, and to stay out of science-costing deficits.

Liberty games can still be strong and have some advantages, but overall I find Tradition good in virtually every circumstance, while Liberty is only good in some circumstances.

 

[budweiser]

I play almost only competitive games (like GOTM) and in BNW the strongest strategy in terms of fastest finishes is tall + (4-6 cities). Player with more cities normally doesn't have chance (unless Ribannah )



Yes, but what for?

For higher score, which was built into the game but is ignored here. The result is we only care about fast finish times.

But, you need to move through the tech tree and also acquire the right policies before you can really add tons of cities. Particularly, Order is made for it. But no one wants to add cities after turn 200 when they are trying to win on turn 250. Another flaw is the mentality that you should open a tree and finish it before you move on to the next tree. This has the unintended effect of limiting growth as each tree has a source of happiness, save maybe Rationalism. Patronage, by far is the best source.

 

[NukeAJS]

Generally, tall is better because of the +% science for founding cities and national wonders become almost impossible to get if you go wide unless you are making heaps and heaps of gold.

Basically, it's the +% for having more cities (puppets count!) that makes wide a bad choice. Even if you get the science buildings up, it often just covers the costs of having the city in the first place. This isn't so bad consider that you have another city to pop out units, make gold ETC. but it's the wasted time of getting those science buildings up.

 

[Silverman6083]

Well, Wide is obviously a stronger style, but on higher difficulties it is extremely hard to set up a Wide empire, so it makes Tall gameplay seem OP. If this is for a balance patch then definitely nerf Tall empires and make it somewhat easier to set up Wide empires(more base happiness?)

 

[Resipsa]

Wider is more dependable, Tall is faster neither is superior

If you are going 4 City Tall SV, you are going to finish fast however If Shaka is on the right side of the map and you on the left and he's killed 6 other civs you might struggle finishing the game attempting to keep up with his production. Going wide even with a Tradition start is more dependable, you'll kill off some AI Cities and create more space for yourself. I never found more than 5 cities though the rest are annexed.

 

[Don Matt]

To truly say which is "better" has too many variables... What type of victory are you going to pursue? If you are looking to dominate the world on a huge map, you will be better off going wide - with your core cities focusing on science and other cities pumping out military. If you are on a small map and looking at a science victory, three or four very tall cities will get you there more quickly.... If you are sharing the world with 11 warmongering civs, but happen to be on your own island, isolated until you have caravels, tall makes a lot of sense.... If you are on a large continent, playing against 11 civs that just want to play peacefully with their tall empires, you might find it hard to outrace them in science, but going wide and wiping a few of them out and....

I play most frequently with these settings: Huge Map, Small Continents, Low Water level, Immortal. I find that the only thing that is constent from game-to-game is that I am near a coastline. Other than that, Sometimes one more more civs (including me!) cannot be discovered without caravels. Other games, all 12 of us are connected by land - or at least can reach each other by trireme. Some games, I'll have Aztecs, Huns, Assyrians, Germans, Zulus, Danes, etc. and I'll need a huge army just to survive. Other games, I'll be up against Greece, Siam, Sweden, Netherlands, etc. and will find it hard just to have a city state ally at all.

Religion? I've seen all seven gone by 2000 BC and I've been in games when there are still three or four available in 1500 AD.

In other words, when my game starts, I have no idea what the optimal strategy will be.... So.. how to start?

* I always go for pottery as my first tech and start exploring. I generally build a scout first and a monument second, but am not sure that this is much better than reversing it. With Ethopia, I'd grab their special building (instead of the monument) right away, but with Spain, it's got be be a scout every time....

* My first Social Policy is usually going to be the Tradition opener. If Pantheons are getting grabbed right and left, I might grab Piety - especially if I already have the monument and haven't found a ruin with the culture bonus.
* By the time I am ready for my next social policy, I generally have a good idea about how much space I am ogin gto have for myself. If my assessment is that I can build at least six cities with little/no resistance, I'll go down Liberty. If I am going to have to fight for more than three or four cities, I stick with Tradition. (note: I always want a religion, so I may pick up enough of the piety tree to get the faith bonus on shrines and temples if a a faith-producing pantheon is not lilkely and if I don't have a Natural Wonder...)
* I then get to 3-5 cities as quickly as I can... sometimes six, if I seem to be rolling in happiness and either money or production and can produce that many setters before acquiring philosophy. I then stop expanding and work on strengthening these cities as my "core" while I get the National College up as fast as I can.
* At this point, I really do have a sense of the flavor of the game... Am I going to spend all game at war, or will the other civs leave me to do pretty much what I want? It's really right here that I finally decide: Tall or Wide.
* When in doubt, however, I prefer wide: not so much as a strategy for getting the fastest win, but,simply, because I think it's more fun to try to expand across the globe and build a huge empire than to simply sit on three or four cities and hit "end turn" for three hours.

 

[joncnunn]

The definitions are flawed for a standard map size.
On standard, Tall is 4 self built cities or less and 95%+ of the time needs Tradition start (or else the cities won't grow big enough to be tall)

Wide includes 6 self built cities on standard map size which the poll description has included.

 

[Matthew.]

Tall scales better with difficulty.

Kaspergm has the point though, which is no real incentive to go wide in most cases. There is a guaranteed investment cost (at the very least acquiring the cities, but then also the question of getting proper infrastructure so it isn't a drain) and quite honestly, by the time you pass that investment cost, you are already bulbing your way to victory with a tall empire.

I think simply longer games would sway it towards wide. Say for example NC, Secularism, and Universities were nerfed and the game was delayed by about 100 turns. That would probably be enough to cover that investment cost and see some of those later cities contributing to a win come late game. As it is, the time between universities and game finish is too short to justify it except for the obvious special cases (sacred sites, domination).

I agree completely with BNW's adding the 5% tech cost per city, which really helped curbed the snowball effect, but it is now obvious that not addressing tall play at the same time has indirectly made it too powerful.

 

[CraigMak]

Ive never heard of 6 cities being tall. 4 or less is normally considered tall and 6 would be more appropriate for a wide liberty build.

 

[Seek]

From what I can tell in the MP scene, tall is 4 or fewer cities, wide is 8+ cities, and 5-7 cities I would characterize as "competitive".

 

[DarkestOnion]

Tall seems to be more useful on most maps and it minimizes the need to forward settle AI's which can lead to something other than a Domination Victory.

 

[MrDumpstertrash]

With this definition I go wide every game, even if I use tradition. There are always a few cities that I annex from an enemy. Going tall usually means happiness is never an issue though so most people are going to say tall.

 

[civmaster17]

I prefer tall less cities but all high pop

 

[Stalker0]

I want to thank everyone for participating in this poll!

It seems that the consistent feeling is Tall is better defined as 1-4 cities, Wide as 5+. So with that in mind, I will be remaking this poll in a new thread.

I hope you all will revote in that poll. This info is very useful to help us with our balance discussions.