Preventing city spamming?

[CaiusDrewart]

I am a little bit skeptical that the measures we've seen are going to be enough to discourage city spamming. But honestly, I would rather play a game where going super-wide is optimal than one where sitting at 3-4 cities is optimal. Obviously, a middle ground of some kind is the ideal, but I think a Civ game should err on the side of encouraging expansion.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I am a little bit skeptical that the measures we've seen are going to be enough to discourage city spamming. But honestly, I would rather play a game where going super-wide is optimal than one where sitting at 3-4 cities is optimal. Obviously, a middle ground of some kind is the ideal, but I think a Civ game should err on the side of encouraging expansion.

There's no need to actually limit being wide. However, it should be viable strategy to delay building settlers and build something else instead. Civ6 system looks exactly like this so far.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

There's no need to actually limit being wide. However, it should be viable strategy to delay building settlers and build something else instead. Civ6 system looks exactly like this so far.

Yeah, this sounds about right to me. Expansion should mean sacrificing science or culture or faith or whatever in the short-term, but ultimately a big empire should be better.

I also think that roughly half-way, maybe two-thirds of the way through the game, the map should be just about filled up (excepting a few marginal deserts and polar regions). Civ V with its unclaimed land deep into the Information Age just didn't work for me.

 

[chaotoroboto]

Yeah, this sounds about right to me. Expansion should mean sacrificing science or culture or faith or whatever in the short-term, but ultimately a big empire should be better.

I also think that roughly half-way, maybe two-thirds of the way through the game, the map should be just about filled up (excepting a few marginal deserts and polar regions). Civ V with its unclaimed land deep into the Information Age just didn't work for me.

Yeah, it's probably the biggest immersion breaker to me - there's basically nowhere in the world that hasn't been stuffed to the gills, relative to the agricultural tech of the time, since the retreat of the ice age.

 

[skyclad]

I hope they encourage city "spam" compared to civ 5! Why should expansion come with crippling penalties? I want my civ to be a cohesive country, not little Island dotted here and there on the map. In civ 4 the minimum nr of cities required to have a decent empire was 7 (min req for lots of national wonders).

 

[Plus Ultra]

Civ VI seems to want us to expand. This is good news.

Opportunity cost and risk/reward mechanics should be more than enough, with hopefully no penalties to avoid any given strategy.

Bigger empires, as long as they are correctly managed, should always be better than smaller ones. Rushing to get the best settling spots in your continent and actively serching for new locations in new lands is what this game should be about.

Your neighbour is spamming cities? Take some of them when he is overstretched, before he is able to defend his whole empire.

 

[cazaderonus]

Well,i dont think there s a question of city spamming here. My point being that you can go ahead and spam but theres no chance that you ll be having only cities that will actually make your empire better. On he other hand, no added cities will make your empire worse.

What i like about civ vi so far is that it seems to allow me to build super tall specialized cities that will act as the beating heart of my empire while still allowing me to build purely defensive cities, or resource grabbing cities. This is what was mising from civ v imo.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Civ VI seems to want us to expand. This is good news.

Opportunity cost and risk/reward mechanics should be more than enough, with hopefully no penalties to avoid any given strategy.

Bigger empires, as long as they are correctly managed, should always be better than smaller ones. Rushing to get the best settling spots in your continent and actively serching for new locations in new lands is what this game should be about.

Your neighbour is spamming cities? Take some of them when he is overstretched, before he is able to defend his whole empire.

Yep. This is the heart of Civ. It's a shame that V got away from this model and made building a tiny fiefdom just as effective as building a sprawling empire.

 

[JediOmen]

Civ V with its unclaimed land deep into the Information Age just didn't work for me.

This is actually a really good point, and it bugged me too. And as has been previously mentioned perhaps spamming should come at a cost instead being prevented. Unfortunately, civ5 was my first civ game (ya i know... n00b ), so i suspect ive gained some bad habits from playing that for years. I have a feeling that the new movement system, full movement points to move into a hill, is going to be f***ing excruciating until i unlearn that...

 

[Aldor]

In Civ5, even if you want to expand (with liberty) the map must be appropriate. You can have tons of great locations around, but if they don't have new luxuries you still often cannot afford planting new cities (due to happiness constraints). That is certainly different with Civ6. I just hope that the settler cost increase and the other similar mechanics won't feel too limiting.

 

[JimmyBanks]

City Spamming is relative. How many cities does one need to build before it is referred to as Spamming? I like going wide, and usually try and have around 6 cities. I always found it hard to restrict myself to 2 or 3 cities like some people do.

 

[JediOmen]

City Spamming is relative.

Yeah it is. I also have to laugh at 6 citys. When I go HAM, I aim for like 13+... lol.

As the game allows obviously...

 

[JimmyBanks]

Yeah it is. I also have to laugh at 6 citys. When I go HAM, I aim for like 13+... lol.

As the game allows obviously...

Yes, I agree, judging on the comments that Ed has made regarding the number of cities I think I'll increase my minimum to around 10, but 13+ I always found myself too far behind when I built that many, Happy to take over that and then some but to found that many, not usually.

 

[JediOmen]

I will admit that despite the true number of cities, some will be allotted to different tasks; I'll usually have a few core (3-5) working on military or wonders, with the remaining operating as auxiliary or colony focus providing strategic resources or logistics support for power projection across the map.

Dispite the decrease in technologies, I hope there will still be as many or more unit types. Thats always been a weakness in my opinion. If not, i look forward to what unit mods start showing up..

 

[cazaderonus]

City Spamming is relative. How many cities does one need to build before it is referred to as Spamming? I like going wide, and usually try and have around 6 cities. I always found it hard to restrict myself to 2 or 3 cities like some people do.

Imo city spamming is a relevant term when spamming cities pretty much anywhere is always beneficial. Meaning that it comes with no downside and enough upside to make it the best move even if the terrain settled seems uninteresting.

That's why i believe civ VI seems to not have that issue. You can create any city you like, but each one will require a bigger hammer investment for the settler, but wont cripple your empire as in civ V.

So even if the terrain isnt especially good, settling a city even for pure strategic reasons (chokepoint, buffer on the edge of your empire, etc..) or even esthetic reasons (yeah i know some like that) will be an option.

And if it doesnt cripple you as in CiV, it seems that those city will only fulfill a limited role as the apparently "weakened" buildings and the district\adjancency bonus system will act as an automatic limiter that wont let you turn those city into efficient cities.

Overall, i think there wont be jack of all trades cities in CiVI. Which kinda acts as a natural limiter to ICS.

 

[BrokenBokken]

I will admit that despite the true number of cities, some will be allotted to different tasks; I'll usually have a few core (3-5) working on military or wonders, with the remaining operating as auxiliary or colony focus providing strategic resources or logistics support for power projection across the map.

Dispite the decrease in technologies, I hope there will still be as many or more unit types. Thats always been a weakness in my opinion. If not, i look forward to what unit mods start showing up..

I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned that there will be less units, but I could be wrong.

 

[Big J Money]

'City spamming' is a loaded term that implies blanketing the world with cities is a bad thing, which it isn't. I prefer simply 'massive expansion', or 'rapid expansion' to indicate doing it as quickly as possible.

The problems to watch out for would be, and of course these are all just design opinions:

- It shouldn't lead to steamrolling that leads to an inevitable win
- It shouldn't always be the best tactic, or required to win the game
- It shouldn't lead to extremely tedious micro-management that makes it not fun to do

As long as these things are covered, I don't have any problems with massive or rapid expansion.

 

[Siptah]

I don't think increasing settler cost is the most limiting mechanic against city spamming. Every district that you build in your empire increases the cost for following districts and the city center counts as a district in that regard, too. So even if you plant cities just to grab some spare land and you don't even want to build a single district there, you pay a price for it in your main cities. If you plant an outpost and you want an encampment there, you pay even more in your main cities. Seek has done some work here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=574080 and the numbers seem really big. This may prevent you from having 13+ cities alone (I'm sure later cards that we don't know yet can reduce district costs). If you want to city spam you really have to be wide and small, wide and tall seems no option.

 

[qadams]

'City spamming' is a loaded term that implies blanketing the world with cities is a bad thing, which it isn't. I prefer simply 'massive expansion', or 'rapid expansion' to indicate doing it as quickly as possible.

The problems to watch out for would be, and of course these are all just design opinions:

- It shouldn't lead to steamrolling that leads to an inevitable win
- It shouldn't always be the best tactic, or required to win the game
- It shouldn't lead to extremely tedious micro-management that makes it not fun to do

As long as these things are covered, I don't have any problems with massive or rapid expansion.

What he said!

 

[Martinus]

There is also the issue of yields not necessarily rising in a linear way with each city, as terrain and district limits play an important role.

One city with a well-placed Campus (e.g. next to 3 mountains) is going to outperform scientifically three cities with Campuses with no adjacency bonuses. So the incentives for rapid expansion are much smaller.