Problems and How to Fix Them

[Lyoncet]

Edit June 10, 2012
This post was too long to add anything else to, so I've added a post with a few new problems, ideas, and suggestions. Click Here.


Civ V has problems. Not as many as it had at launch, but it has them. Some of these problems development anticipated, and some didn’t get addressed until they were brought up by the community. Sometimes they were fixed well, sometimes they were fixed poorly. I wanted to get my thoughts out there because I know as soon as they see them Firaxis will realize that they’re all brilliant and implement every one of them.

No not really. But I do hope this leads to some good conversation, and hopefully there will be a little trickle-up. If not, well it’s fun to talk about. Also note that this doesn't get into the deep, core gamplay problems like poor strategic AI and wonky diplomacy. It just deals with individual issues that can be easily encapsulated and addressed. Let's please not make this a "bring up every gripe you have about the core gameplay" thread, since that's what the Civilization V Rants Thread is there for. So without further ado, I present you with this Lyoncet special: Problems and How to Fix Them.



Bulbing and Hurry Production
I actually just posted this to another thread, so it’s mostly repeat from that. But this is the biggie, in my opinion, and I wanted to make sure it got brought up here too.

The Problem
There are some cases where a manufactory or an academy is better than hurrying or bulbing. These cases are very, very scant. Granted, it's hard to balance because you'll get more hammers/beakers over the course of a game from an manufactory or academy than from a hurry or a bulb (if done early on, at least), but the opportunity cost of having to wait so long for a return on investment means that you'll probably get a lot more use out of the instant gratification options. Maybe you'll get, say, 5x the beakers over the course of the game from building an academy than bulbing, but when you can get Rifles 20 turns earlier by bulbing, or save up 3 scientists and get it 60 turns ahead of everyone else, well you just won. Doesn't matter that by modern era you'd have gotten more gross beakers because instead you just killed everyone.

Then again, that doesn't mean the improvements are too weak – they're actually very strong, and it would be hard to make them much stronger without breaking them. Making them scale with tech/Freedom was a step in the right direction, but I think additionally the scientist/engineer one-shot abilities need to be made a little less exploitable. Also, the tradeoff between immediate benefit and long-term benefit is fine to have, but as it is being able to rush a wonder or tech slingshot is just so much better because of how abusable that mechanic is.

The Solution
Hurry Production Consumes the Great Engineer, giving the city +50% production (or maybe, say, +10 base hammers) for 10 turns.
Accelerate Research Consumes the Great Scientist, giving the city +100% research rate for 10 turns.

These are just off-the-cuff numbers, but they give you an idea. You still balance long-term vs. short-term (vs. golden age, and vs. donating the GP in G&K), but you can't guarantee you can get whatever you want as soon as you want it, which is why hurry production is way too good. This doesn't let you beeline by rushing an expensive tech or denying a wonder, or worse, slingshotting, but it does make you choose between planning for immediate benefit vs. long-term gain. Also, that would give us an extra knob to tweak between tall and wide empires. If it seems like tall empires are very good at science but really lacking in hammers, make the engineer a very large city-based bonus and the scientist a smaller but empire-wide effect. End result is wide empires get more benefit from the GS and tall empires with their huge cities get more benefit from the GE. I don't know if there's actually a real imbalance between the two, but that could be a unique way to bring them into line a little. (Not saying tall and wide should function identically, just that if they're too out of whack this could help remedy that. Or if one is worse across the board, this could boost it back up.)

Some have suggested that you just give bulbing a cooldown like culture bombing, but I don’t think that’s as good of a solution. It nerfs slingshotting, which is needed, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem that a bulbing on its own is too good compared to the alternatives.

The Benefit
You weaken some mechanics that are so powerful they eliminate choice. Choice is a good thing. It’s what makes 4x games addictive. When one choice is almost always superior in just about every way, as is the case with hurrying and bulbing, you crush what the genre thrives on. With some tweaking of the numbers, you would get rid of the huge situational cost of not using the immediate benefit of your GS or GE, while still giving the player a choice between how the want to focus their efforts. If you’re approaching a tech breakpoint, or trying to get a wonder or raise up an army, go ahead and use their ability. You get a sizeable immediate benefit (but far less than currently), but by maybe 30 turns down the road it’s evened out, and another 30 turns after that if you haven’t leveraged the short-term benefit into an advantage you’re actually behind where you would have been. (This is actually how it works now, but there’s almost never a time when you won’t end up far, far ahead by hurrying or bulbing, so it’s a moot point.) Additionally, you can get the added benefit of having an intrinsic bonus to different aspects of tall vs. wide empires by fiddling with whether the bonus applies a big modifier to a city or a smaller modifier to an empire.



Resource Trade Exploits
The second biggest priority on my list, because as with policy saving (see below), there are a lot of ways this could get fixed badly. But there are other ways of fixing it that would add some depth to the game along with eliminating the exploits while the whole time being completely reasonable from a realism perspective, so I’m hopeful.

The Problem
We’ve all seen it. We trade 4 luxuries to the AI for almost 1000 gold, and then we let barbarians pillage our only Ivory so the whole deal gets canceled. Or we sell someone everything we have and then declare war on them once we’ve drained their coffers. Yeah, it’s a big part of Diety-level play, but 1) this game is super easy anyways and 2) the fact that exploiting the AI for gold is such an integral part of play is a problem. (Also, the AI needs to be able to determine when it actually needs those luxuries, but that also gets into the AI’s ability to ignore happiness due to its bonuses and that’s another subject entirely.)

The Bad Solution
Nerf trades. Make it so the AI just gives you a pittance for your resources. That fixes the problem, but in a way that diminishes the game. Selling resources to the AI for money is just fine. Maybe the price could be adjusted a bit, but as a mechanic there’s no reason to discourage legitimate deals. It’s the exploitation of the AI that’s a problem, and that’s what needs to be targeted.

The Good Solution
Make the AI leaders keep track of when you do this. If you get a single resource deal canceled because of barbs, OK, fine. Fool me once, shame on you. But if you have, say, 3+ resources canceled because of it, or if it happens repeatedly, suddenly all the leaders stop being so eager to buy your resources for an up-front cost. Maybe they’ll do 1:1 resource trades (but maybe not since they know you’re not trustworthy) or trade for GPT, but no big wholesale purchases.

Likewise, if you do the DoW trick, why on earth would any civ accept a proposal for a large purchase of resources? You’ve already done it at least once; it’s completely reasonable to expect another leader to flip out when you turn around and offer them the same deal. Who in their right minds would agree to that? Maybe add a line of dialog in the leader screen about “You haven’t been a very reliable trade partner in the past” or “We’ve seen what happens to those you do business with” if that’s the reason the AI doesn’t agree to a deal so it’s really obvious that they’re onto you.

The Benefit
Fixes one of the biggest exploits in the game. Does it in a way that adds a little depth to diplomacy. Does it in a way that’s completely reasonable from a realism standpoint. Is simple to understand. Adds a penalty for the player, but one they have complete control over. Sure, you might get pillaged when you actually didn’t want to, but if you’re bad at protecting your partners’ investments, your partners should get a little leery of doing business with you if it happens repeatedly.

Some people may say that resource selling should be kept as it is because it’s so instrumental to higher difficulty play. I’d respond by saying that it doesn’t have to be and it shouldn’t be. As noted already, this game is full of exploits that make it far too easy across difficulties. Exploiting the AI for gold is one of the reasons it’s so easy. Having an AI that will let you fleece it again and again and again without ever catching on cheapens the game considerably, and is one of the reasons it’s so easy. This addresses those issues without cracking down on the core resource trading and buying mechanic, which is just fine as it is.



Great Merchants and Great Artists
This is really just a balancing issue, and not a pressing one. But it could still use a nice once-over.

The Problem
Compared to the other Great Persons, these guys are just bad. I’m honestly angry every time I get a Great Merchant. And since getting a great person makes all your other great persons take even long to spawn, that means that it’s actually hurting you to spawn one of these guys the majority of the time. Yeah, sometimes you want a landmark for a culture win, but not often. And even then, you’d rather have a GE to rush Cristo Redentor or Sydney Opera House. Sure, the first few you can turn into Golden Ages, but even that’s usually worse than you could do with a good great person, and it gives some sharp diminishing returns, and if you’re in a game with much fighting (i.e., most every game you’ll ever play), you’ll be burning extra Great Generals on that anyways.

There are two parts to a GP: special ability and special improvement. I’m not counting Golden Age or donating (in G&K) because those are identical for all GPs and therefore not relevant to internal balancing. (Also, I’m not counting Great Generals since they’re kind of their own thing.) For special abilities, Great Artists are OK, but there aren’t a lot of times when you’ll find them that relevant. Great Merchants’ Trade Mission ability is also OKish, but wholly unimpressive by comparison. Which would you prefer: 600 gold, or bulbing Rifling. Or rushing Hagia Sophia so you can rush Porcelain Tower so you can bulb Rifling in a few turns. Yeah, I thought so. Obviously, GEs and GSes are redesigned as I think they should be, this will be less of a problem, but I think the lesser GPs need to be brought up in power as well.

As for tile improvements, come on. How many times have you thought “Man, I just wish I could turn that riverside tile into 2 food 5 gold”? (I think that’s the number, anyways.) Probably fewer times than you thought “Man, it would be great if those hill sheep also gave me 6 hammers.” Landmarks are a little better, but only a little, and only for one purpose (culture win), and even then, not as good as anything that one of the good GPs could do.

The Solution
First, rebalance Great Scientists and Great Engineers. Once that’s done, I think both the tile improvements and the special abilities Merchants and Artists need a pass. (Artists of course may be changing since Generals are getting a culture bomb ability added to their Citadel ability, but since we’re not sure what Artists’ ability is changing to, if anything, I’m working on what we have now.) For improvements, how about something like this:

Construct Customs House: +6 Gold, provides double resources if built on a luxury resource
Construct Landmark: +5 Culture, +2 Happiness

That makes both of them much more valuable without just scaling their numbers up. Just making them provide more of what they give you would be a mistake IMO, since that has the problem of making the improvements way too good in certain while leaving them useless in most.

For Special Abilities, we could change them to:

Conduct Trade Mission: Conducts a trade mission when in the borders of a civilization you are not at war with, generating 600 gold for your empire, 200 gold for their empire, and improving your relations.
Produce Great Work: Immediately begins a 2-turn Golden Age. All your subsequent Golden Ages last an additional 2 turns.

Honestly, I don’t care so much about the Artist’s special ability, as long as it’s something decent in G&K. And maybe Trade Missions will be better in the expansion as well since it’s going to be harder to generate favor with City-States. But it would make sense for Great Artists to have some sort of unique interaction with Golden Ages, and I think making Great Merchants capable of boosting relations with other civs would 1) make sense and 2) add another desperately needed way of boosting relations between civs.

The Benefit
People won’t be stuck either avoiding these two types of GPs or getting fewer of the really useful ones. They’ll have incentive to actively seek these types out, depending on how they’re playing (there’s that “choice” theme popping up again). We get another way of generating a little happiness for those willing to go out of their way for it, which allows more choice (there it is again) in how they build their empires. Having good improvements and good abilities means we’ll have unique and interesting ways of leveraging them depending on how we’re playing that particular game and the circumstances we find ourselves in.



Policy Saving
I know I’m too late on this one since this was changed ages ago. But I felt like touching on it because in my opinion this problem was solved very, very poorly.

The Problem
At release, there was no rule that forced the player to spend their culture points the turn they accumulated enough to buy a policy. So people were saving up their culture points, not spending any until they hit a tech breakpoint (say, saving up until Industrial and then buying all of Order and Autocracy), and then filling out a bunch of trees at once. Alternately, they were going for culture wins by saving until they grabbed Cristo Redentor, then using the reduced policy cost to effectively grab free policies. This was a problem for two reasons: it was way too good of a strategy, and worse, it gave people an incentive to entirely ignore early policies. Now that the early policies have been buffed quite a bit, this is less of a problem, but it’s still a problem nevertheless.

The (Current) Solution
The rule we have now: you have to buy a policy as soon as you have the culture to do it. Of course this can be turned off, but the fact remains: this was a really bad way to solve the problem. Why? Because it can sometimes penalize you for producing culture. Say the next policy you want is coming in 30 turns, and in 29 turns you’ll get a tech that puts you in the era you need for that policy. Then, you decide to build a culture building. Well guess what: by producing more culture, you’re now going to get punished, because you’ll need to take a policy you didn’t want in the first place and put off one you did by a great number of turns. It’s not just corner cases like that, either. It’s the very fact that this system will at times make building culture buildings a worse way of getting culture. You can micromanage, but sometimes that won’t fix the problem, it’s incredibly tedious, and you’re making the player do that or do worse with their culture because they’re focusing on culture. That’s a problem. Especially when there’s a very easy solution to the issue that doesn’t create a problem almost as big as the one it sets out to solve.

The (Better) Solution
Make it so you don’t have to pick a policy the turn you hit the threshold, but also stop generating culture towards policies until you choose one. That way if you think it’s worth essentially not generating any culture for X turns while you wait to pop a tech so you can get the policy you want, you can make that choice. It fixes the problem, and it does it without encouraging tedious micromanagement (which with how difficult it is to influence culture and research rates in Civ V is in no way what most people would consider enjoyable), and it forces the player to make some value assessments, which is a core part of what makes 4x games enjoyable. While the ship’s already sailed on this one, the fact that it was such a huge missed opportunity makes it worth brining up here anyways.

The Benefit
You fix the original problems. You do it without sometimes screwing the player over for doing what they should have been doing in the first place. You add another level of choices the player has to make, even if only rarely. And it’s an easy fix. Win/win/win/win.



That’s all for now. I’m sure I’ll think of other things, but for the moment I’m pretty drained. Let me reiterate that I don't want this to become a thread where people come to complain about things they don't like about how CiV works without providing constructive comments. As I said, we already have a Civilization V Rants Thread that is still active and healthy. Hopefully this will generate some good discussion, and even if it doesn’t lead to anything getting picked up, at least we can hope the ensuing conversation will filter up a bit into the upper echelons of development.

(Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he? )

 

[El Caballerion]

Agreed with all. And why aren't you working for Firaxis in the first place?

 

[elprofesor]

Good points. I'll still add a pet peeve of mine: when you lose a city, the cost for your next SP doesn't decrease because that would lead to the well known exploit of accumulating a huge amount of culture, then sell all of your cities to massively reduce the cost of SPs, win via culture. Alternatively, when you settle a city one turn before you unlock a SP, the cost of the SP increases as much as if you had settled it right after you unlocked the previous SP, which is particularly annoying at the beginning of the game.

My solution: whenever your number of cities changes, multiply the total amount of culture accumulated since your last SP by the same factor as the cost of your next SP, both when you get a new city and when you lose a new city. That way SP costs drop when you lose a city, but the previously mentioned exploit isn't feasible, and settling a city right before your next SP has a minimal impact in the number of turns until you unlock it.

It's actually quite logical, if you think about it.

 

[Grimlin]

Top quality post, thank you Lyoncet

 

[Buccaneer]

I agree with the first two, I am not sure about your SP solution. I find micromanagement not to be tedious and forces you to plan ahead, much like we do on techs and RAs. I like in the current way that, if you don't plan or manage correctly, you have to deal with the consequences (i.e., not getting full benefits). Your solution will reward players for not planning and managing.

Addendum: I like the system of positive/negative consequences better than choosing between good choice vs. a better choice (as in your example). More challenging and riskier for the player.

 

[AriochIV]

There's a simpler way to reduce trade exploits, which was used in Civ IV: you only allow trade for items of the same type. Resources could only be traded for other resources, and one-time things like techs or cash could only be traded for the same. This prevents you from offering a long-term deal for up-front cash and then breaking the deal immediately.

"Making the AI smarter" as a solution sounds nice, but you know it's not going to happen.

 

[Lyoncet]

There's a simpler way to reduce trade exploits, which was used in Civ IV: you only allow trade for items of the same type. Resources could only be traded for other resources, and one-time things like techs or cash could only be traded for the same. This prevents you from offering a long-term deal for up-front cash and then breaking the deal immediately.

"Making the AI smarter" as a solution sounds nice, but you know it's not going to happen.

That's a possible solution, but like I said, I think the current model is fine. You could get the same spirit as your suggestion by also allowing the player to use GPT in resource trades too, but then you're also getting into a problem. What if you make a deal that include:

A research agreement
Open borders
Declaring war
GPT
Luxuries
A lump sum

Obviously that's a gross exaggeration, but the point remains: with how trading works in Civ V, I don't think it would make more sense to do it my way than to make the AI not accept deals that have a luxury good on one end and a lump sum on the other, or any sort of lump sum for a per-turn arrangement. I don't think a little tweak like making the AI keep track of your previous deals is outside the real of possibility. I doubt it'll happen as fo G&K release, but down the road it's not unlikely.

I agree with the first two, I am not sure about your SP solution. I find micromanagement not to be tedious and forces you to plan ahead, much like we do on techs and RAs. I like in the current way that, if you don't plan or manage correctly, you have to deal with the consequences (i.e., not getting full benefits). Your solution will reward players for not planning and managing.

Addendum: I like the system of positive/negative consequences better than choosing between good choice vs. a better choice (as in your example). More challenging and riskier for the player.

A fair set of points. I guess in the end it comes down to personal preference; I didn't like the amount of micromanagement that Civ IV encouraged, for example. But even that micromanagement was long the lines of "can you get this tech a turn earlier by doing binary research?" The SP system isn't about squeezing more out of what you have. It's about either getting it on par, or setting yourself back by a huge number of turns. Getting standard fare from intense micromanagement and actually setting yourself back for playing normally is, IMO, a worse way of doing it than getting standard fare from ignoring micro and getting a bonus from doing it well. But again, it's just opinion. Hence the tongue-and-cheek way I wrote the header for the second solution.

Agreed with all. And why aren't you working for Firaxis in the first place?

They'd never be able to afford what I'm worth, so I just volunteer my services where they matter most: on a fansite webforum.

 

[GenjiKhan]

I somehow disagree with the solution for fixing the GS . Such solution penalizes Wide/Conqueror empires,because you need a highly developed city,in order to get a better bonus . Maybe nerfing the efficiency of the Great Scientist through the ages,in a same way the efficiency of Hurry production of the GE is nerfed when rushing late wonders would be the best alternative . Along with a Cooldown between the use of the GS,it's a simple way to discourage the use of one time boost in late game .

About the "Resource Trade Exploits",the best way I see to fix it is to make ai pays more for trading resources,if most of the payment is in GPT,instead paying all the gold at once . Right now,the ai prefers to pay more if they can make one time payment,which is exactly THE OPPOSITE of one of the most important laws of negociation(increasing the paying time also increases the payment itself);

For conducting trade missions,I think it's better if can only be made in City-states(which is the current case),but the Gold payment should be always equal to the amount of gold necessary to sign 3 Research Agreements,along with the 30 Influence points .

The "Policy Saving" doesn't seem to be a problem anymore,if they manage to balance the bonus of the Social policies . Beyond that,I agree with most of your statement .

 

[Lyoncet]

I somehow disagree with the solution for fixing the GS . Such solution penalizes Wide/Conqueror empires,because you need a highly developed city,in order to get a better bonus .

One of the reasons I came up with the suggestion I did was so that Great Scientists and Engineers could be used as a balancing tool between tall empires and wide empires. In my own experience and forum-cruising, it seems like going wide and conquest-happy is pretty much the best way you can play. Having one playstyle be so optimal (like it was in Civ IV, where ICS was about the only strategy there was) detracts from the game overall, and I think doing GP bonuses to particular cities would be a good way to help balance that out, on top of balancing the units themselves. And if I'm wrong and tall peaceful empires actually are (or become at some point) significantly better than wide/puppet empires, you could go with my suggestion of making it a smaller bonus but apply it empire-wide, which would make it better for the sprawling empires with lots of cities.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[joncnunn]

I would consider a more Civ 4 like approach for these:

Great Scientist boost: Only provides up to flat X beakers towards a single tech.

(Early game it would give a free tech, come mid game it would be most of the beakers, but by the modern era it might only be about 25% of the beakers needed)

Great Enginner boost: Dramatically lower the city's population portion of the cap. So again, it will still build an early wonder in 1 turn, but even in your high pop city will only provide almost all hammers for a mid game wonder, while something like 30% for a modern one.)

As to trades, the main problem with a rep based one is that the biggest single cause of broken resource trade agreements in my own games by a very large margin is that same AI DOWing me while it was still active.

That happiness from landmarks is a good idea.

 

[Lyoncet]

As to trades, the main problem with a rep based one is that the biggest single cause of broken resource trade agreements in my own games by a very large margin is that same AI DOWing me while it was still active.

Good point. But I doubt that would be hard to code around. AI DoWs on you = no trade penalty. You DoW on AI or get your resources pillaged = AI takes note.

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

Oh yeah. I spent a while wondering if I should post this in General Discussion or Gods and Kings and kind of forgot that there was a third (and proper) option.

 

[elniallo]

For GS it could act more like a free research agreement. So it would give you as many beakers as a research agreement maturing on that turn would.

 

[Kurtbob]

I like your ideas for Resource Trade Exploits. Cancelled deals create distrust amongst your opponents regardless of how a deal is cancelled. Would a civ receive a diplo hit when it cancels a trade deal or would a new trade mechanic that distinguishes how trustworthy a civ is need to be introduced?

I welcome your ideas for the Great Artist and Great Merchant having better tile improvements. My play style revolves around spamming Great Engineers and Great Artists for Manufactories and Landmarks + finishing Freedom for a culture win. I have never used a Great Merchant to create a Customs House and would like more incentive to build one. Your idea does give me incentive. When spamming Great People improvements I find it rather annoying being punished for building a Great Person improvement on a luxury resource (you lose access to that resource) but not for building on a strategic resource. I understand it's because strategic resources appear on the map later than turn 0 and it’s unfair to deny a strategic resource due to an earlier improvement construction, but it’s annoying nonetheless. I think your idea for the Customs House is great and I personally would love to see the idea implemented so that I can build upon luxury resources. Not sure about doubling the luxury resources (Would the luxury be quadrupled with a Bazarr?) but it would increase my incentive to build Custom Houses. The two extra happiness from Landmarks would be icing on my culture win cake.

I understand your policy saving suggestion but, as a culture win player, it doesn't seem to be as big a problem as you portray it. I have never found a situation where waiting X turns would be beneficial to my culture win. Since I need to finish five policy trees there is room to wait and plenty of policies to choose from. Why should I waste X turns of culture waiting for a tech to open another policy branch when there is a plethora of valid policy options already open to me? Piety opens up early enough that you shouldn't have to make a decision to open another early policy branch after finishing one already. I'm emphasizing Piety because I feel it is the only branch a culture win oriented player should rush to complete. All other branches can wait (even Freedom). I know I'm being very narrow minded here by looking at your idea through my play style, but I really don't see the need for such a change.

 

[Babri]

Good post by OP. However I would like to make my own suggestions about them.

The easiest way to solve the luxury for gold problem is that make it deal in GPT. This means that luxuries can give u steady source of income which is less exploitable & more realistic.

Regarding the Great Artist & Great Merchants I'll quote myself from another topic :-

They can give Great Artist an ability to bulb a whole SP early on & partially late in the game. This might need some balancing for cultural victory though.

The Great Merchant would not only give gold & influence from the CS but also enhance the benefits u are getting from that CS for a period of time. That adds a lot of flexibilty, mercentile CS would give extra gold instead as temporary increase in happiness might not be that tempting except in dire circumstances. Cultural CS would give extra culture, religious CS would give extra faith etc.
That could balance them & make them as useful as GS & GE hopefully.

 

[Phrozen]

I think the coming nerf to gold influence to CS in G&K. I am sure the Great Merchants will be more powerful with their trade mission ability.

 

[Lyoncet]

I like your ideas for Resource Trade Exploits. Cancelled deals create distrust amongst your opponents regardless of how a deal is cancelled. Would a civ receive a diplo hit when it cancels a trade deal or would a new trade mechanic that distinguishes how trustworthy a civ is need to be introduced?

If I were designing it, I would say getting pillaged more than once or twice should give no diplomatic hit but discourage trades (people trade at reduced value or not at all for a while, or just trade trade in luxuries or GPT but not a lump sum), but DoWing after selling luxuries should give a large diplo hit that scales down in severity corresponding to how long it's been since you initiated the trade. So if 25 turns later you see an opportunity to take out a civ, you'll still get a diplo hit for being bloodthirsty, but not an additional penalty for the trade deal because it obviously wasn't factored in – if you meant to fleece them, you could have done it, but you hardly actually gained anything.

The easiest way to solve the luxury for gold problem is that make it deal in GPT. This means that luxuries can give u steady source of income which is less exploitable & more realistic.

I'm still not a big fan of eliminating cash-up-front entirely, since that seems like it's misidentifying the problem. IMO, lump sum deals are completely fine. Unless we're talking just as a way to simplify things, in which case you have a point, but also losing the ability to include money on one side of a large deal and resources on the other seems to incur its own set of limitations that I'd rather not see.

I think the coming nerf to gold influence to CS in G&K. I am sure the Great Merchants will be more powerful with their trade mission ability.

This is very likely. But I do believe it's overly restrictive regardless. Sort of like how Great Artists are good, but only a little bit of the time. Of course you'll probably have more games where you want to garner favor with City-States than games where you'd want a Landmark or a Culture Bomb, but I don't think the SA should be as narrowly focused as it is, since I think there should be an honest-to-goodness decision to be made whenever one pops: do I use the immediate benefit ability, or do I use the long-term benefit ability? If the special ability is narrowly focused, that choice is eliminated altogether in some games/playstyles/settings. Additionally, this would add another layer to diplomacy. Not a very deep one, since it's pretty much binary, but it does give another way of creating positive relations with other civs, AND, perhaps most importantly, it allows civs that are really willing to focus on it the ability to get substantial diplomatic bonuses. That's something that the franchise has really struggled to bring to the table. But it's something that mods add in constantly (see Cavemen 2 Cosmos, for example) because it's something the series could really, really use. Perhaps the G&K changes like the embassy will address that, but I doubt the change will be substantial either way.

Anyways, I just think that while most of the constraints Civ V has are good in general (good game design is all about forcing constraints onto the player, which they then have to overcome, after all), a civ that really wants to focus a lot of its efforts on overcoming those restrictions should have more tools to do so. Like focusing heavily on getting Great Merchants if you want to be able to smooth relations over somewhat, or having more ways of generating happiness if, again, you're willing to make sacrifices to do it.

But again, that's just my personal philosophy. IMO it helps differentiate playthroughs. You can do that to an extent in CiVanilla (why does Chrome recognize that word???), but having more things to vary up playthroughs helps replay value and helps cater to a wider range of playstyles, which helps it appeal to a wider range of players.

 

[Lyoncet]

Well I just tried editing my original post, and it went over by >4,000 characters. I see this is why people reserve a few spots after the OP for long, long posts. Oh well. I'll just link to this post at the end of that one.

Anyways, here's a few more to get the creative juices flowing:




Trade Deals
I think it’s safe to say that the ability to conduct trade deals has gotten markedly better across the board in 4x games over the past few years. Gone are the “guess-check-revise” days of getting the most out of your trades. But there are a few ways that CiV could really stand to change things up.

The Problem
There are two: renegotiating deals every X turns (depending on speed) is a pain, and the “what will make this deal work?” button can end up with the AI putting something absolutely silly on either side of the trade. The first we know is being addressed in G&K. The second we have no word on. It’s not a huge issue, but I think it could really be smoothed out. Here’s now:

The Solution
Have an option on both sides of the negotiating table that essentially says “do not put this item on the table.” So if you have 1, for example, cotton, and you under no circumstances want to trade it, the game won’t keep putting it on the table every time you click “what will make this deal work.” Same on the AI’s side. If you’re taking peace and they keep offering you a couple crappy cities, you can click those cities off and see how that will affect the gold/resources they’re willing to give you instead of having to guess how much it’s worth and either guess too high and have a bunch of stuff you don’t want to give them put on your side of the bargain, or guessing too low and having it default back to what you just changed it from. Again, you’ll probably usually arrive at about the same deal, but with much less tedium.

The Benefit
This is pretty much just a quality of life change (actually, it’s exactly just a quality of life change). But it would be a pretty sizeable one, I think. I seem to waste a fair amount of time clicking things on and off of the table just to have the AI completely ignore the change I made when I try to get the deal to work. It’s frustrating, it’s not too difficult to fix, and it’s something I’ve never seen done. It would be a nice little innovation the series could bring to the genre. (Unless it does already exist somewhere and I just missed it.)

Note that this would essentially be the human player's equivalent of Civ IV's redded out trade options – things that they have, but for whatever reason will under no circumstances trade to you. So it's not like the franchise has never had this feature, but just never given it to the player to the best of my knowledge.



1UPTPTPT
I think 1UPT is a good thing. It breathes new life into the Civ combat model by adding an element into combat that it never had before, and gives a nice feel for the importance of efficiently fielding troops in combat. Sure, the scale’s way, way off, but that’s OK with me. Nothing in Civ has ever been to scale. That doesn’t detract from it, IMO.

The Problem
So then what’s the problem? Well, this system creates some problems that really just hamper the game rather than bolster combat. Ever tried moving through an allied city-state’s territory in the latter half of the game? Absolute nightmare. Ever had a wartime partner? Curse and pull your hair out as their Pikemen surround the city and keep your Longswords from moving in for the kill. Units that can’t move through other civ’s units due to no open spaces, even if they share open borders. Blocking choke points to troll the AI (or for the AI to accidentally troll the player). There are so many logistical nightmares that just make things that should be easy really suck.

The Solution
The solution, IMO, is 1UPTPT – 1 unit per tile per team. Or to really abuse the acronym, 1UPTPTPT (1 unit per tile per team per turn). What constitutes a “team?” Probably someone you have a Declaration of Friendship with. It could also just be someone you’re not at war with or someone you have an embassy with, but I’d vote for DoF as the definition. However, you’d still have instances of unit blocking trollage, so maybe just “anyone you’re not at war with” would be better.

The Benefit
The biggest reason for this is you eliminate an enormous hassle that really has no place being in this game. Being frustrated because you can’t get a unit past those two warriors that are just sitting there laughing at you takes things that should be simple, fundamental elements of the game and makes you punch your computer over them. It makes wartime partners a help rather than the hindrance they usually are. It means the carpets of doom you see on higher difficulties don’t make it impossible to move your units anywhere. And it does it while maintaining what I think is a strong, albeit controversial, element of the game. Plus if you make the benchmark having actual friendly relations (maybe even just embassies), you give a small incentive to be friendly with people, which lord knows this game could use.



Food Resources
I know they wanted to get rid of health as a mechanic, and this is why food resources don’t actually provide you with a resource. I think the game would have been better off keeping health, but this isn’t a thread to discuss changes to the overarching game mechanics. Rather, I’m focusing on the collateral damage of the elimination of health: food resources themselves.

The Problem
OK, well maybe it’s not a problem. But it bugs me that food resources do so little compared to strategic and luxury. Making the tiles scale with improvements (stable, granary, etc.) and then later with technology was a step in the right direction, but that just improved the tile yield. It didn’t do anything to make the resources themselves important.

The Solution
So how do you make the resources relevant empire-wide or trade-wise without re-introducing health? You make them just like luxury resources: make them give your empire a yield of some sort. Instead of giving health, each unique type of food resource you have could give cities in your empire a +1 bonus to food, and these resources could be traded or sold just like other types. Or rather than + food, maybe they give, say, +4% growth rate per unique resource. Wide empires could accumulate many of these resources for trade (they can’t grow that far anyways), and tall empires could use them to grow taller faster. Or if the wide empire needs them they could keep/purchase them, and the tall empires could, when they don’t want to grow, sell them. It gives the player another layer of easy-to-grasp, intuitive, decisions they can make. It opens up more opportunities for trade. It helps facilitate different playstyles. All these things help improve the game experience without re-adding another mechanic that the developers made a conscious decision not to include. Also, it would make specialist-oriented economies a little easier to approach, and would help make it easier to settle locations with less access to good food tiles.

Of course, this would also mean you’d probably want to introduce more types of food resources. Pigs, rice, citrus, buffalo, etc. could all be added. This would carry the added benefit of putting some +food improvements on techs that didn’t have them before, leading to more ways of starting off your game depending on your starting situation, which again increases variance, which improves the play experience and the replay factor. Citrus can be improved after calendar. Buffalo with archery (I don’t see snares as something you’d use to catch a bison, but I could be wrong).



Freedom vs. Everything Else
This is another mostly-repost from another thread, but again, I thought it was worth a mention here since it’s such a glaring issue.

The Problem
The problem is the Liberty tree. It’s amazing. Most games, the other picks are simply wrong. The settler’s amazing. The worker’s amazing. The great person is amazing. The golden age is amazing. The other trees have their uses, but it’s pretty much the same issue as with Great Merchants/Great Artists. Yeah, sometimes you want them. But hardly ever.

The Solution
I'm of the opinion that the +1 culture per city is fine, free worker's fine, the +1/+5% hammers is fine, and the happiness boost is fine. The Golden Age + policy cost reduction is a little on the powerful side, and the setter and especially the free GP are absurdly good compared to the alternatives. Particularly with when the free GP comes. It's almost surprising these days when I don't get a Great Engineer right as I get Education so I can rush Hagia Sophia so I can get a Great Engineer so I can rush Porcelain Tower so I can get a Great Scientist so I can bulb... whatever it is I decide I need at that point. Considering you're also getting the RA benefit, the +GP points benefit, and the other output associated with those buildings, that's just too powerful. Although part of that is the fault of the Hagia Sophia-Porcelain Tower trick also being on the OP side. But you still have to consider how any aspect of the game interacts with its environment.

As for what to do about them, I think that it would be nice if it had something to do with settlers, because those are things that go well with the wide empires Liberty is supposed to focus on. But I think it goes about it the wrong way. Getting a free settler early game is equally good for both tall AND wide empires, unless you're doing a one-city play. But wide empires want more of them. So, perhaps something like replacing the free settler with "+50% production speed of Settlers. You may spend gold to purchase Settlers." Along with, of course, removing the innate ability to buy settlers with gold. Because really, does anybody actually hard-build Settlers anymore? Forcing most openings to build their settlers, but also giving the player a way to reclaim the ability to purchase them if they want to, seems like an OK idea. But maybe that would end up still Liberty to good.

For the free Golden Age, again, I think it's the right idea, but implemented poorly. After all, wide empires benefit immensely from Golden Ages. The problem is that that particular policy that early is incredibly strong on its own because of – again – where it comes. It's super easy to pick that policy right when you can start getting your empire online, either using it to build/buy an army to whack your nearest neighbors, buy Libraries so you can get your National College online as early as possible, accelerate your wonder production while buying infrastructure... that size of a boost that early, especially when taken with the other bonuses, is good. Too good. But it does make sense to have a GA-focused policy. So why not make it something like "All your Golden Ages are increased by 2 turns." It would still be a very good policy, as it would result in more turns of golden ages over the course of most games, but it would also not give you such an overwhelming early advantage to go with all the other overwhelming early advantages. Maybe this would still be too good, so instead it could buffer the number of turns of golden age your GP give you, so instead of 12/9/6/3/3/3/3 you could get 15/12/9/6/3/3/3.... You'd still et an extra 12 turns of Golden Age before modifiers like Chichen Itza and Achaemenid Legacy, but only once you'd popped a bunch of those useless Great Merchants your puppets produce constantly.

Finally, with the finisher, I still like the GP focus. I don't know if it really belongs in this tree, but I like it anyways. So perhaps this could co-opt Freedom's finisher, but to a lesser extent. I like GP buildings and I'm bummed that I almost never have a good reason to build them since bulbing and rushing now are usually better than the long-term benefits of an Academy or Manufactory. And Landmarks are only good for one victory condition, and Custom Houses are one of the most pitiable things put in this game. So, along with hopefully reworking the way GPs balance out between one another and within their own ability pools, I'd like to see, say, a +2 or +3 bonus of the appropriate yield of each GP improvement. This would also mean that between this finisher and the GA length increase, the Freedom finisher would be distributed through other policies and would have to be reworked (as hopefully the whole tree will be, since as sit is it's pretty lackluster. 8 maintenance-free units? In a specialist-focused tree? OK whatever you say.)

The Benefit
This would help moderate the pretty much unsurpassed immediate benefits you get from the Liberty tree, which IMO are the reason it's so good compared to the others. The other trees have some good stuff too, but none of it is AS good, and worse, most of them take a lot longer to show results. And with how much success in most any 4x game, CiV included, depends on strong early turns snowballing into more and more momentum, the other trees will just languish until the problem is addressed. Bringing the early policies into line power-wise would bring the element of choice into the early policies in a much stronger way.




Piety vs. Not-Piety
I also posted about this one on another thread, but I’m going to leave it for now. From what we’ve seen about the Piety tree in G&K, they’ve made it focused somewhat on culture and somewhat on faith, but the culture focus seems to be giving other boosts for investing in culture, not just in giving you more culture. Which actually comes out to giving you less benefit from your culture, which means it’s only good if you want to click on as many social policies as possible: i.e. when playing Culture wins (except Organized Religion, which can be strong in non-culture games).

To elaborate a little on the problem, taking policies in Piety is like if there were a building that, once built, gave you +1hammer per turn, but also cost you 500 hammers and made all your subsequent buildings cost more hammers. As it stands, most Piety policies are just there to make it cheaper to adopt more policies. But since you’re spending culture to take Piety policies that you could have used to take those policies you want to use Piety policies to take cheaper, you’re essentially wasting culture points. You’re putting X culture in, and you’re getting X-Y culture back out. Even if you did recoup the culture cost eventually (I doubt that would ever happen), you’d be incurring a huge opportunity cost by taking it in the first place, since you’re delaying those policies that will really benefit you by a lot. On top of that, since each subsequent policy you adopt costs more and more, you’re almost guaranteed never to want to pick Piety unless you’re going for a culture win.

Which, IMO, is bad. You can’t win culture without it, and in other games you shouldn’t even consider it. Again: no choice involved in making that decision. Just the binary “Am I playing like this? Then my decision is already made for me.” Of course, they’d also have to rebalance culture wins if they did that, since as I said, Piety as it is is instrumental for culture games. If I’m right and they’re refocusing the tree, that’s wonderful. Hopefully I won’t have to bring this up again. And you won’t want me to bring this up again. I spent about 3 pages on it in one post. But if it remains more-or-less as it is, that’ll be an absolute shame and a huge missed opportunity.



Much Later Edit
Brussels has declared war on Tyre had declared war on Sidon has declared war on Singapore has declared war on Helsinki has declared war on Quebec City has declared war on Sydney has declared war on Kathmandu has declared war on Warsaw has declared war on Florence has declared war on Copenhagen has declared war on Oslo has declared war on Budapest has declared war on Vienna has declared war on Rio de Janeiro has declared war on Vince has declared war on Brussels

The Problem
That.

The Solution
"Arabia and its allies have declared war on the Iroquois and its allies!"
[mouseover] (Brussels, Sidon, Helsinki, Sydney, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Budapest, Rio de Janeiro vs. Tyre, Singapore, Quebec City, Kathmandu, Florence, Oslo, Budapest, Rio de Janeiro)

The Benefit
Again, that.





That's all for now! Hope this provided some good food for thought, and if not, at least an interesting read!

 

[GenjiKhan]

Freedom vs. Everything Else
This is another mostly-repost from another thread, but again, I thought it was worth a mention here since it’s such a glaring issue.

I'd like to help with these solutions:

The Solution
For the free Golden Age, again, I think it's the right idea, but implemented poorly. After all, wide empires benefit immensely from Golden Ages. The problem is that that particular policy that early is incredibly strong on its own because of – again – where it comes. It's super easy to pick that policy right when you can start getting your empire online, either using it to build/buy an army to whack your nearest neighbors, buy Libraries so you can get your National College online as early as possible, accelerate your wonder production while buying infrastructure... that size of a boost that early, especially when taken with the other bonuses, is good. Too good. But it does make sense to have a GA-focused policy. So why not make it something like "All your Golden Ages are increased by 2 turns." It would still be a very good policy, as it would result in more turns of golden ages over the course of most games, but it would also not give you such an overwhelming early advantage to go with all the other overwhelming early advantages. Maybe this would still be too good, so instead it could buffer the number of turns of golden age your GP give you, so instead of 12/9/6/3/3/3/3 you could get 15/12/9/6/3/3/3.... You'd still et an extra 12 turns of Golden Age before modifiers like Chichen Itza and Achaemenid Legacy, but only once you'd popped a bunch of those useless Great Merchants your puppets produce constantly.

The main idea behind the GA bonus of this Social policy(Representation) is to accelerate the improving rate of your cities before you settle new ones,as the devs suppose that most of the players would pick up Representation before expanding,which doesn't happen in most of the cases . So,one solution to this problem might be allowing the Capital to build settlers without wasting the population for a short amount of time or making all the cities who are founded after the player adopt this SP to give +0,5 happiness(this bonus can be limited by only some turns after the player pick up the SP of be limited to a specific number of cities) .

Finally, with the finisher, I still like the GP focus. I don't know if it really belongs in this tree, but I like it anyways. So perhaps this could co-opt Freedom's finisher, but to a lesser extent. I like GP buildings and I'm bummed that I almost never have a good reason to build them since bulbing and rushing now are usually better than the long-term benefits of an Academy or Manufactory. And Landmarks are only good for one victory condition, and Custom Houses are one of the most pitiable things put in this game. So, along with hopefully reworking the way GPs balance out between one another and within their own ability pools, I'd like to see, say, a +2 or +3 bonus of the appropriate yield of each GP improvement. This would also mean that between this finisher and the GA length increase, the Freedom finisher would be distributed through other policies and would have to be reworked (as hopefully the whole tree will be, since as sit is it's pretty lackluster. 8 maintenance-free units? In a specialist-focused tree? OK whatever you say.)

I though this as a solution for fixing "Representation",but I guess it may work better for fixing the Liberty Finisher instead . Instead having a free GP,the Liberty Finisher could trigger a "We Love the King Day",with half of the normal duration in all cities,except Capital,along with +1 Faith for every city you own . In this way,such Finisher would be much more interesting to Wide empires,as the purporse of Liberty is to give benefits for expanding and maintain a wide empire. Such Finisher would require the player to get as many happiness as he can,because unhapiness will grow very quickly . Improving the GP buildings isn't so interesting,because generating Great People is the strenght of Tall empires,not Wide ones .

 

[Phrozen]

I really think the free worker and worker speed bonus should be moved to Tradition. It makes sense that a smaller focusing empire would be interested in improving the tiles they already have instead of spreading out.