Production, the only yield that matters

[Stalker0]

Now with several games under my belt, I am finding that in general....hammers are by far the most important thing in the game, and there is still not enough of them.

Districts and buildings cost an arm and a leg. Wonders can often take 25-30 turns, even with the 15% discount. Units though I find build in reasonable times.

In my last science victory, I finished the entire tech tree, yet had to go through 50 turns to finish all of the Mars modules....and that was with a city that had the Ruh Valley (the only wonder that really helps production), 4 production granting trade routes, 4 industrial districts providing their powerplant bonuses to my capital, and as many lumbermills and mines as I can slap down.

While I am not usually in favor of adjusting balance so early after the game comes out, I think its clear that a hammer reduction is needed on many of the buildings, wonders, and spaceship parts.

 

[Sagax]

Played 2 games so far, aiming for Science Victory in both.

Ended up with Cultural Victory that I never aimed for. By the time you manage to build all the space projects, the entire Earth AND Mars will already be wearing your jeans and listening to your music.

I feel like they kept the Civ5 formulas untouched while adding unstacked cities and districts as a huge hurdle. Districts take quite some time to build, do almost nothing without further buildings,and on top of that occupy the space that you used to dedicate to farms and mines. IMO the numbers are off across the board.

 

[kampori]

Yep. First 2 games I was aiming for science victory. Had finished both tech tree and civics tree by 1850, but after building spaceport and all the projects, didn't win until 1950. 19 turns for each Mars project, 10 turns for satellite and moon landing. And 30 turns to build the spaceport. That's a lot of hammers..

First attempt I won with culture before I even finished the spaceport.

 

[isau]

Agreed. I went into the XML and dropped the cost of all buildings by 25%. And it's still too high.

Big part of the problem is there isn't any good way to get hammers in your cities if there aren't hills nearby. I have a city right now with level 7 population taking 33 turns to build a Harbor District... and that's with the 25% cost reduction I gave it. It's not just a balance problem, it's boring.

Meanwhile since Eurekas are often based on what you've built, Hammers indirectly convert to Culture and Science at a rate higher than actual Culture and Science do. This isn't true for all techs, but definitely for some.

 

[Amrunril]

I'd agree that hammers are a bit to important now, which makes sense, given that eurekas and city state quests have added a lot of new ways to convert hammers into other yields and that the other growth yield (food) requires two supplemental yields (housing and amenities) to provide its full benefit. From what I've seen, though, it seems like a small imbalance rather than a large one, and as far as the space race is concerned, it's worth noting that the right great scientists and engineers can make a massive difference in construction time.

 

[kaspergm]

Yes, hammers seem to be very important, probably too important. A hammer starved start is pretty much doomed, because housing puts such a severe limit on how big you can grow your cities, even with all the food in the world. Things are very expensive to build (and even more so to buy), which means that an industrial zone is a must in pretty much every city - even more so, because those juicy area bonuses from the factories and powerplants are just insanely good.

 

[King Jason]

Are you guys overlapping your factories? I just finished a space victory and my tourist output was absolutely atrocious.

The subject isn't wrong though - production is king. Which is precisely why I sort of develop a honeycomb pattern surrounding my capital and overlap industrial districts. Remember, the cities need to be build 4 tiles apart, but the districts can be put anywhere in the overlapping radius except the inner ring. In one game I had 4 industrial districts adjacent to each other surrounded by mined hills. In another, My capital ended up overlapping with 9 industrial districts using this method way, and the rest of my cities had overlapped with at least 6.

 

[Myth and Legend]

Agreed. I abandoned a start i got that had NO hills, just grassland, marshes and resources.

 

[mnf]

In another, My capital ended up overlapping with 9 industrial districts using this method way, and the rest of my cities had overlapped with at least 6.

That's cool but it shouldn't be what the game is balanced around. Unless you play specifically to get that formation (which more often than not will be gimping your other placements or are simply impossible on some map types) I'd say usually getting 4 cities within range is tops.

On the topic of science victory requiring too much production, I am thinking maybe this design came from Beyond Earth. It's basically there to act as a window of opportunity for others to interrupt your victory. While it may work for other types of victories, it doesn't work for science, because if you're leading science victory, you've got a superior defending force able to defend against any attack, and that drawn-out last run that was supposed to feel like a sprint at the end of a marathon, now feels like the start of another marathon altogether...

 

[King Jason]

Depends on what you define as gimping. All of my cities could produce everything they needed and I ended the game researching future tech and globalization on repeat while the other civs were left in the dust on Deity.

Whether it should be balanced around such extremes, you may have a point. But that's how it is. The most efficient strategy I've found so far is intense district overlap. Even if they get no adjacency bonuses. You suggest 1 district affecting 4 cities tops? I'd suggest at least 4 minimum. As of now the most important part of placing industrial districts is how many cities you'll effect with them.

At this point I practically plan my entire civ around the industrial district. Whether it should be that way is moot - It's the easiest way to zoom to a space victory for sure.

 

[Brianstorm]

Seems to scale badly if you increase game length as well, the wonder cost even on Epic is kinda insane and no one is building them (and if they do they're built two eras late)

 

[GKrause]

Agree totally. It's nearly impossible to get cities off the ground without multiple hills. Even then, it seems like the only city planning that really matters is getting a decent industrial district adjacency. All districts seem to cost too much, but it's particularly egregious for the earlier ones such as campus and encampment. I've been finding that I completely ignore any districts until I beeline industrial zones and commercial hubs and then try to backfill campus, encampment, and theatre districts. The worst part is that I'm still burning through techs and civics without trying to go for science and culture AT ALL. Feels like the earlier districts and buildings that accompany them need to cost significantly less and the techs/civics need to probably cost a bit more so players can't simply ignore science and culture early. Bonus food ends up becoming useless very quickly as you hit the housing cap and then you just click through 20 turns of overcosted infrastructure.

Also agree that scaling to epic seems to exacerbate the problem, I shudder to think what people playing marathon are going through.

 

[ggmoyang]

Agree totally. It's nearly impossible to get cities off the ground without multiple hills.

So Rome was great because it was founded on seven hills...

 

[Acken]

I'd lower costs and remove area wide production bonuses from factory/plant. These would be fine if at least they didn't stack.

 

[King Jason]

Or people should re-adjust their play styles to fit the game's design.

 

[Acken]

It's not about adapting. I adapted and I think it sucks. Not sure what is fun about spamming industrial districts so that it overlaps on as much cities as possible.
But if you like it kuddos to you.

 

[Brianstorm]

Or people should re-adjust their play styles to fit the game's design.

It's not design, the balancing is way off and will be patched eventually. Unless The Great Lighthouse and Colosseum being built in the Industrial era is part of the game design.

 

[LikeMike]

How do the overlapping bonuses work? Only for industrial districts?

 

[Acken]

Factories and Power plant give their production to all cities in a 6 tiles radius. And this bonus stacks from multiple factories/plants.
Off the top of my head.

 

[King Jason]

It's not about adapting. I adapted and I think it sucks. Not sure what is fun about spamming industrial districts so that it overlaps on as much cities as possible.
But if you like it kuddos to you.

But... it is. Not saying there isn't an argument for it to be changed but Look at the National College slingshot or pretty much the entire science behind chopping and whipping in civ4. Optimal strategies arise and you either make use of them or you don't. But I don't even think this is on that level of cheese, honestly - it's more like, say, Spamming cottages in civ4. Tons of people complained about that because they didn't like the way the landscape looked, i.e how their empire looked. But unless you're doing SE - you're going to need to spam cottages whether you like to or not, it's just how you scale properly. People were raising an aesthetic issue with a necessary mechanic of the game.

Well currently - Industrial overlap is pretty much necessary. While people might not like it, I have a hard time imagining that with a radius of 6 hexes that overlap, that it wasn't part of the design goal for people to make liberal use of that mechanic - Late game production was probably scaled with this in mind which is why many people are noticing that they get into the later eras and can barely build anything in a reasonable amount.

It doesn't matter whether I like the mechanic or not. It appears to be part of how the game is played.