RB3 - Daring Deity with Ottomans

[bestje]

As another of the long time civ players who is disappointed in how V turned out particularly after all the hype, I'm grateful for games like this that show i'm not alone in my opinion.

I wonder if part of the problem is that when they realised it wasn't working back in testing that there was an assumption the community would fix the game?

A few thoughts on other peoples thoughts:

One possible thing to limit ICS a little....
significantly increase cost of settlers whenever you attain a new age.

Would have some historical accuracy - seems to me that most current cities were founded a long time ago, and also that if one suddenly wanted to set up a new city today it would take a heck of a lot more basic infrastructure in place before anyone would consider moving there...so higher cost of settlers.

This would also be a slight curb to the technologically-leading (or slingshotting) empires as well. And provide some strategic thinking...this tech is really nice, but mabye I should expand a bit more first...

Would not be felt in the ancient age at all, and would limit rush-settling in medieval times and gradually ..(not force but)..encourage people to develop/conquer current cities rather than raze and carpet over with new ones.

This might work as an idea, I think you'd perhaps have to throw in some 'free' buildings with the new city though. So you pay more for the settler upfront but get a city with a few of the basic buildings, kind of like an IKEA flatpack city.

Perhaps rush-buying ought to be modified so it is actually a "rush" rather than an "instant" buy. It's been pointed out before that the idea of throwing money at a problem to get results is a relatively recent idea. It doesn't make sense that handful of gold will get you spearmen any faster. So at the start of the game rush buying should be impossible, or at best it should speed things up by some "small" factor. Then as you reach certain technologies the speed bonus you get would increase. The cost would either stay the same or go up as you reached each new tech, depending on how you wanted to balance things. Perhaps at first rush buying would get the unit completed in half the time, then a third the time, then a quarter the time, again depending on how you wanted to balance things.

Of course that would mean that if you needed to rush buy a unit to defend against an incoming attack you might be forced to go with a weaker unit in order to get it done in time, or that it would just be impossible. I'm not sure if that would be a good thing or not

Whilst rushing training of your own troops with cash didn't really happen, many empires made use of mercenarys which in gameplay terms would probably work out as about the same so you could make an argument for early or at least medieval rush buys. Though I agree that in CiV rush buying definitely needs to be altered.

@Chaunceymo: the seperated production queues could work really well but it would lose some of the trade off from other civ games of whether to build an army or infrastructure. Which in 4 particularly could be a very delicate balance of exactly how much to allocate either way.

The other problem with some changes will be how well the AI can handle them.

 

[Tarkeel]

@Sullla: You might want to update the first post with links to the rest:
Turns 0-20: Find the first foe
Turns 20-40: My Little Pony
Turns 40-55: The first war
Turns 55-69: War and Peace and War again
Turns 69-85: Two-front war

Turns 85-97: Making peace, featuring free gold and research-tweaking
Turns 97-110: Nobody expects the French Inquisition
Turns 110-115 (SevenSpirits): War weariness
Turns 115-125 (alpaca): Holding ground
Turns 125-135 (uberfish): Nothing really happened today

Turns 135-145 (Sullla): Still not much happening
Turns 145-155 (luddite): Treading water
Turns 155-165 (alpaca): Turning the tide
Turns 165-178 (uberfish): Fall of France

Turns 178-191 (Sullla): The first offensive war
Turns 191-203 (luddite): Fall of the Aztec
Turns 203-210 (alpaca): The End

France is the one that declared war on us? Oh man, the diplomacy in this game is beyond broken. At what point does everyone stop believing that lie about "playing to win" and realize that the AI wars endlessly with everyone around it... Honestly, I think you could replace the current diplo AI with a random number generator that declared war periodically on someone. Would you even be able to tell a difference?

Napoloeon seems to be THE biggest warmonger around in Civ V; my last Deity-attempt ended early when he came knocking with 2 warriors and 2 charriots on turn 33..

 

[anti_strunt]

This might work as an idea, I think you'd perhaps have to throw in some 'free' buildings with the new city though. So you pay more for the settler upfront but get a city with a few of the basic buildings, kind of like an IKEA flatpack city.

Hmm, giving every new city too many free buildings would only encourage spamming them out. I would rather there was a population threshold after which you recieved certain buildings free of charge provided you had the tech for them. If you were already building it you would be refunded like with a built wonder. That way large cities would automatically have fairly good infrastructure and boosting population would have additional benefits.

Something like
Size 6: Free Granary/Monument
Size 8: Free Library/Market
Size 10: Free Colluseum/Temple
Size 12: Free University/Bank

Just making the above up, but the point is that you'd have to weigh the benefit of growth in free hammers against founding many littler cities and building everything yourself, and adjust your happiness management etc. accordingly.

The dread CivRev had tons of free size-related boni like this.

 

[Nutteria]

Imo if there were policys that directly remove/lower unhappyness of larger citys while the unhappyness for each subsequent city created by your civ(aka to encourage you to anex citys and not raze them) to rise this could lead to some medium where it is cool to have 7-10 citys while the gain of having an extra one will show itself after it grows past sertain level(say 10).To do that however you need to beef up the yields which directly relates to the production which directly contradicts with the design of the 1UPT because it can and will lead to blanket of doom.

So the problem is not with the ICS and its abusive nature.The problem is with the core design itself.

 

[kuukkeli]

I agree with rb8954 that many proposed fixes seem to be taking the already lacking diversity off the game. I don't think that the main focus should be on nerfing ICS but to make other strategies more viable. I'd like to see the optimal strategies to be more situational based both on the random factors (like map and neighbors) and player's own preferred style of playing.

About the idea to increase Settler costs by era: I don't think this makes much sense. First of all cities have been founded throughout history when there's been new land to grab. In Civilization this means that founding cities should be somewhat preferable option for as long as there's unclaimed land. Even during the last two centuries (in Civ5 terms during Industrial Age or later) cities have been found around important resources.

I'd much rather give boost to bigger cities with some combination of the following changes and perhaps some others I may have missed:

• non-linear science output (idea described here)
• have large population to give city a culture output
• slightly reduce the amount of food required by large cities to grow
• make bonuses from maritime and cultural city states depend on city size
• change (especially later era) buildings to give bonuses proportional to city size (%-increases, per pop increases or increases to worked tile yields) instead of fixed numbers
• increase yields for both resources and improvements

pi-r8's concerns about 1upt, game speed and map clogging are in my opinion more serious and more difficult to fix. I'd like to add one concern to his list before giving any thought on possible solutions:

• increased movement speed required by 1upt to work decreases game length and is yet another reason why tech rate has to be faster than before

At least to me the greatest problem 1upt brings is that pretty much every change made to support it is decreasing the number of turns the game lasts. That is also the main reason why non-domination victories are harder - they've been scaled more towards the turn limit rather than the actual turn amount it takes to win by domination.

It's hard to come up with a solution that keeps the core changes of the game (meaning I'm not going to suggest stacking even though I'd probably prefer CtP-style myself). I have some ideas to limit the number of units but they'd all require heavy testing because the changes are quite big:

• put a hard cap on number of units civilization can have (dependent on population, techs, etc.)
• increase the military unit upkeep heavily by each era (something like Warrior 1gpt, Knight 5gpt, Mechanized Infantry 20gpt, etc.)
• this idea to upgrade units with hammers instead of gold (I'd allow upgrade within your empire instead of just the garrison because the latter would only increase the tedious and pointless moving of your units around - let the city building the upgrade to choose unit within its workable area)

All of these assume that empire building part of the game is fixed to accommodate the released production into something useful.

Other possible changes to slow down the military victory path could be:

• decrease the movement values of early units (to better support 1upt let units to take one forced march extra move per turn at the cost of 1hp)
• make cities considerably harder to conquer the bigger they get (or at least make defensive buildings much better)
• remove 33% open terrain penalty to decrease effectiveness of pure horseman armies (artillery could be given bonuses vs the open to keep it's usage in defense unhindered)
• add penalties to warmongering (War Weariness for internal and diplomatic penalties for international - this requires working diplomacy system of course and clear division between defensive and offensive wars and maybe even casus belli system for taking back what's rightfully yours)

Basically I'd like to fix the game exactly the opposite from pi-r8's ideas - instead of making teching even faster than it is I'd rather try to slow down domination considerably. I agree with him that there are quite a few techs that have no value other than being required for another tech but again I'd rather fix it by giving them value rather than removing them. What the game needs is more choices to choose your path, not just to shorten the one viable path.

To put it short, decrease the micro management from where it matters little (citizens, I'm talking about you), where it's abundant (units) and spread it more evenly across the scope of the game. Slow down the pace a little (too many reports seem to end when only about half of the possible turns are played - instead of having well played standard deity game be won around t200 make it be won closer to t300 and more marginal games going closer to time limits) and make victory conditions more equal.

 

[brindle]

So what do we have now? Thanks to 1UPT, we've got a game that tries hard to limit production because large armies break the 1UPT system. To limit production as the game goes on, large cities increase their production very slowly relative to science. This means that small cities remain competative throughout the entire game. This, combined with the many loopholes in the happiness system, allow an empire of many small cities to massively outproduce and outtech an empire of a few large cities, so the 1UPT is broken anyway with a massive clog of advanced units, early in the game. In my opinion, this is not fixable without severe changes to the game, such as bringing back stacks or greatly increasing the minimum distance between cities.

Your entire post is spot-on and I hope it is read by the developers. However, (although i think a fix i propose would take a massive patch), i think there is a simple solution.

Put back production as king (instead of cash) and control unit counts via buildings.

They should have controlled unit counts by a combination of resources and buildings, and made city hammer production 3x higher. And, as you suggest, tone down the $$ inflow of selling. Then the game would be back to being one about producing things instead of buying things. Assuming also a nerf with free food, you would then need high pop cities that could work hammers. Hammers make building, buildings allow for units.

For instance, a barracks would allow +1 non-mounted unit, a stable for +1 mounted unit (instead of adding exp to new units). +1 or 2 units if horse/iron tile worked (instead of huge +4/6). Advanced buildings like armory could be +2 etc. There would be no 'free' units. all unit count controlled by having the infrastructure/resources in place - of course, a player might start with 2-3 free non-mounted count for capital.

This would make small cities (hammer deficient) not nearly as valuable and the upkeep of having a ton of barracks etc would cripple you (so unit counts would stay down, cities would also be more specialized, and ICS of tiny useles production cities wouldn't be dominate).

Also, cranking up production (with some correction in the very high maint cost) would put back the fun in building stuff instead of waiting 75 turns for a building....)

 

[ChevalierdeJstn]

At first glance I'm liking brindle's idea a lot. "Rush" buying units could still be implemented as a back-up...it's called "drafting" and perhaps the drafted units are weaker than the units that are "built" in a barracks/stable etc.

I do agree with the 1UPT issues pointed out by the pir8 luddite ("We don't need no newfangled sails, mateys, ROW!") I also agree that the other (related) core problem with Civ 5 is the economy. Rather than make it more interesting and nuanced by getting rid of the slider, the game has gone in the other direction. Where there used to be a tough strategic decision (tech or cash) now with the two divorced from each other, and building production so slow that maintenance really isn't an issue for much of the game, it's all about cash cash cash. This game needs something to better balance the superb usefulness of gold vs. other inputs of production.

One idea I have off the top of my head is to implement diminishing returns on production inputs (yes I am an economist IRL.) For example, it actually doesn't make sense that giving double the money to a citystate increases one's influence with it by more than 1:1. In real life, almost everyone has a concave utility curve. You would like a slice of pizza and will pay $1 for it. How much will you pay for the 40th slice of pizza? Probably not $1, if you can even stand to eat that many slices! Similarly, early gifts/buying (when gold is scarce) would normally have greater value (and reap greater rewards) than the gift of the 10,000th piece of gold. This would mean that while buying things outright is still possible throughout the game, it becomes less attractive vs. producing stuff yourself (resulting in the strategic decision to focus more on the other factors of production.)

 

[uberfish]

oh, before it gets lost in the balance discussion I forgot to post the final save Here it is, sorry guys

 

[Blackfang]

• put a hard cap on number of units civilization can have (dependent on population, techs, etc.)

• 
  
  IMO that should be achieved by a simple edit of the current supply system:
  1) 10 units (maybe less) over supply limit should give -100% production (now, if I'm not mistaken, the maximum penalty is 70%);
  2) increase rushbuying costs for going over supply limit, and prohibit rushbuying at the same point as building;
  3) I'd also like to add - remove supply for number of cities (2 per city right now, I believe).
  
  

  • non-linear science output (idea described here)
  • have large population to give city a culture output
  • slightly reduce the amount of food required by large cities to grow

  • 
    
    I like those very much. I'd also like to add:
    - significantly increase tech costs per era (that would be compensated by exponential science per population);
    - make great scientists and research agreements unable to give free techs in not-yet-reached era (maybe great library as well);
    
    

    • make bonuses from maritime and cultural city states depend on city size

    • 
      
      About this, I'd like to point out that a serious part of the current problems with city-states is due to the fact, that the AI doesn't know what to do with them.
      Sure, the maritime city-states still need to be nerfed, but not as seriously as many seem to believe (if the AI will learn, how to properly work with city-states, of course).

 

[kuukkeli]

About this, I'd like to point out that a serious part of the current problems with city-states is due to the fact, that the AI doesn't know what to do with them.

That's partially true but as someone (Sullla?) somewhere (here?) said it can't be corrected by just making AI more actively buying city states because massive AI bonuses on high difficulties would make it impossible for player to ever ally with CS.

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

That's partially true but as someone (Sullla?) somewhere (here?) said it can't be corrected by just making AI more actively buying city states because massive AI bonuses on high difficulties would make it impossible for player to ever ally with CS.

IMO, if you want to become ally of a city-state you should be required to do their quest missions. It should not be possible to buy your way to better than friend status.

 

[code65536]

I think the biggest problem with Civ5 is the increased disconnect between the real world and the game world. The progression from Civ1 to 4 has been to make the game more realistic, adding more elements and dimensions to the model. But Civ5, they took a big step backwards. E.g., ICS means that players are no longer rewarded for civilizing.

But with regards to stacks vs. 1UPT, I think that the problem with stacks would have been best dealt with if Firaxis took a cue from Paradox and their Europa Universalis series (now that is what I call a realistic strategy!) where military concentrations are limited by something quite realistic: the amount of troops a piece of land could support/supply.

This can be easily modeled in Civ: for example, one approach would be to limit the number of units allowed per tile to the tile's food production, with perhaps a bonus for friendly territory and a penalty for hostile territory. This prevents megastacks, allows for better tactics than the current 1UPT, and is a more satisfying simulation to boot (historically, armies often did not do well marching across deserts, tundra or marshes, and this will probably give invading armies a reason not to burn the farms that they come across).

Anyway, I agree that Civ5 is probably a lost cause. But maybe there is a 6 in the future?

 

[anti_strunt]

I think the biggest problem with Civ5 is the increased disconnect between the real world and the game world. The progression from Civ1 to 4 has been to make the game more realistic, adding more elements and dimensions to the model. But Civ5, they took a big step backwards. E.g., ICS means that players are no longer rewarded for civilizing.

But with regards to stacks vs. 1UPT, I think that the problem with stacks would have been best dealt with if Firaxis took a cue from Paradox and their Europa Universalis series (now that is what I call a realistic strategy!) where military concentrations are limited by something quite realistic: the amount of troops a piece of land could support/supply.

This can be easily modeled in Civ: for example, one approach would be to limit the number of units allowed per tile to the tile's food production, with perhaps a bonus for friendly territory and a penalty for hostile territory. This prevents megastacks, allows for better tactics than the current 1UPT, and is a more satisfying simulation to boot (historically, armies often did not do well marching across deserts, tundra or marshes, and this will probably give invading armies a reason not to burn the farms that they come across).

Anyway, I agree that Civ5 is probably a lost cause. But maybe there is a 6 in the future?

Don't know about the realism of any P'dox game. Plenty of detail, sure, but the end results are always somewhat lacking... I certainly agree that Civ 5 has taken a more liberal approach to "simulating" real events, but that connection was always extremely spurious, yet people still enjoyed the previous games...

Adding extra detail in the name of "realism" is one of the easiest things to mod anyway, since it's just a matter of quantity, but the problem with Civ 5 seems to be deeper, concerning fundamental gameplay design issues and that is a more serious problem, since it makes the game uninteresting for both people looking for a fun and challenging game, and those looking for a history simulator. Adding extra detail won't cure a sick foundation.

 

[Paeanblack]

Turn 12 (1300AD): Do the same thing as every other turn, kill more Aztec units. It's a bit amazing just how many units the AI can churn out on Deity, and how utterly useless they prove to be. I'd like to hand off the turn here, but I'm pretty sure I can take Calix next turn, and it will involve more precise unit moves than I'm willing to describe. So I'm going to take just the first part of one more turn to try and get that city.

Hidden inside this quote is the very heart of the issue.

The problems with Civ5 really have nothing to do with hammer/beaker balance, ICS, maritimes, or anything else.

The problem is:
"I'm pretty sure I can take Calix next turn, and it will involve more precise unit moves than I'm willing to describe".

1upt creates a very difficult puzzle for an AI. Being able to squeeze the very last drop out of your unit's capabilities makes them unimaginably more effective than even units managed moderately well. No amount of production bonuses or unit spam will ameliorate this difference, because there is not enough room on the front lines for extra units to matter.

It was the combat movement that won this game. The kill ratio was probably somewhere between 20:1 and 50:1. Cut that down to just 5:1, which is still a great ratio, and these guys would have been smeared into goo.


In previous Civs, I had to account for the inevitable casualties. I built fodder units. Engaging in war cost an obscene amount of hammers that just vanished into smoke on the battlefield.

Sulla & pi-r8 make some good arguments about various imbalances in Civ5, but I really don't see them as that big of a deal. Yeah, the AI should bid for maritime alliances. Yeah, a few crosslinks in the tech tree would help. But those are tweaks...even without them, Civ5 is a fine game....sorta.

If humans could actually lose units to the AI, then yes...it would absolutely be a fine game.

 

[chaunceymo]

This sounds like a wonderful idea. I'm not sure why you think sliders are required.

Mention sliders because that's how I've seen it implemented in past games. Means easy macro and micro control if you split them to empire/city sliders. It also lets you really specialize cities, if you have a fishing village on a one hex island you don't want them to waste any shields on military units, while a front-line production juggernaut doesn't want to waste time building pansy infrastructure buildings.

One thing to note is that the civilian side can build wealth/research if nothing else is available or interesting. Should the military be able to build wealth/research as well? I'm inclined to say no, which means that there needs to be something else for it to do.

The slider problem does fix this, but I also really like your idea of having to station a unit at a city to upgrade them, via shields in the military queue. Since it would be in a production queue you could still cash rush the upgrade, but at least having to do it in a friendly city (and only one per turn) would mean no more instant rifleman army the same turn you get the tech.

 

[themadevil]

Sullla, if you are disheartened by Civ5, and tired of Civ4, I have a request... how about some more FF1? I love reading your writings, and am very intrigued by your writing style, and have gotten about halfway through your FF1 reports now...and as they say, more is better (at least, more gets me longer periods of procrastinating everything else)

I also must say that I was very let down by Civ5... the visuals are great, but the gameplay is just so very tedious as opposed to the other games. I'll keep to Civ4 until further notice.

Thanks everyone for a great read.

 

[Blackfang]

That's partially true but as someone (Sullla?) somewhere (here?) said it can't be corrected by just making AI more actively buying city states because massive AI bonuses on high difficulties would make it impossible for player to ever ally with CS.

True, but the AI can't stop you from befriending a city-state, and two friendly city-states give about as good bonuses, except resources, as one allied one (and require about the same gold).
Currently that would probably provoke the AI into war with you, but making the AI less of a homicidal freak is also on the list of required changes, IMO.

 

[pi-r8]

It was the combat movement that won this game. The kill ratio was probably somewhere between 20:1 and 50:1. Cut that down to just 5:1, which is still a great ratio, and these guys would have been smeared into goo.

...

If humans could actually lose units to the AI, then yes...it would absolutely be a fine game.

Well sure, we would have lost losing units at 5:1. The deity AIs can produce 5 times as many units, and we were at war with three of them at the same time! But I don't see how that changes the fact that the economy/building part of this game is so broken. If we hadn't taken advantage of the broken economy features, the AI would have had a lot more than 5 times as many units.

I don't see how you can say it's "a fine game" when the best building strategy is to ignore 90% of the buildings in the game.

 

[Venezianer]

Great game! Epic battles! And a lot of suspense ...

Civ 5 must be a failure ...

@ pi-r8, I think your Suleiman has nearly perfect conditions:

- gold

- a lot of wine

- a lot of horses

- a lot of iron

- and the doomed Nobunaga

- Kyoto with the Pyramids

- Japan without Spearmen

Are you shure, that you find the "best" building strategy? ICS is one solution. Maybe the
most effective. But your walkthrough is like an invitation to find another strategy. Maybe
one with more buildings?

@ sullla, I would appreciate the initial save ...

 

[ChevalierdeJstn]

I don't see how you can say it's "a fine game" when the best building strategy is to ignore 90% of the buildings in the game.

Hm, I wouldn't agree that is true. Depending on the victory condition one is pursuing, and the leader one is playing, buildings certainly seem necessary - to run specialists, or help build culture, or make money.

I think the specific problem here is that the optimal game strategy _if all you want to do is win_ seems to always be ICS + minimal buildings + dominate...or get bored and buy a diplo victory. Pursuing a science or culture victory means you have to consciously play NOT to win some other way first. And it's really not possible to win a "true" diplo victory because if you have enough gold to bribe that many city states...you can almost certainly win by various other means as well.

Contrast this with many of the Civ 4 Deity and Immortal writeups here on the forums, where due to the vagaries of starting conditions and AI responses, quite frequently the optimal (or the only viable!) strategy was to go for cultural or true diplomacy. It seems to me that what this and several other SGs by veteran players have shown, is that there is a One Ring to Rule Them All strategy in Civ 5...which makes repeated playthroughs kind of pointless unless one is willing to tie one's hands and deliberately avoid that optimal strategy.