[R&F] Rise and Fall General Discussion Thread

[Vahnstad]

Great depression was a Dark Age. WWII was the emergency. US came out in Heroic Age, USSR just a Golden one.

But the USSR never had a dark age.

Also, how long does an age last here. 10 years? And to me, i don't think it was a heroic age for most of the Germans itself (and the silent opposition).

 

[Zaarin]

But the USSR never had a dark age.

Also, how long does an age last here. 10 years? And to me, i don't think it was a heroic age for most of the Germans itself (and the silent opposition).

You wouldn't consider the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War a dark age?

 

[nzcamel]

Also, how long does an age last here. 10 years? And to me, i don't think it was a heroic age for most of the Germans itself (and the silent opposition).

Well, they vary in Civ. The early ones last a lot longer than the late ones.

But the USSR never had a dark age.

You wouldn't consider the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War a dark age?

I think the whole thing was a dark age.

 

[Vahnstad]

You wouldn't consider the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War a dark age?

It did improve the life of the Russians on the long run, so maybe dark age -> heroic age -> golden age -> normal age (when Brezhnev came in power) -> dark age in 1985 -> normal age 2000. Since the Russians lost heavily in 1907 (even humiliated), lost in WW1 and there was a lot of unstability in the beginning of the 20th century, the dark age must have started even in the 19th century. Tsarist Russia also had lots of famines.

What i try to say is that the USSR didn't suffer from the Great Depression, it took profit from it.

 

[DeutschDachs]

But the USSR never had a dark age.

Also, how long does an age last here. 10 years? And to me, i don't think it was a heroic age for most of the Germans itself (and the silent opposition).

The Russian Revolution itself could be the Dark Age perhaps. Or the Great Purge

 

[Scaramanga]

But the USSR never had a dark age.

Also, how long does an age last here. 10 years? And to me, i don't think it was a heroic age for most of the Germans itself (and the silent opposition).

Great Depression was like a worldwide Dark Age. And maybe USSR was the one with the heroic age, I dunno.

 

[Vahnstad]

The Russian Revolution itself could be the Dark Age perhaps. Or the Great Purge

Life quality improved a lot, industrialization progressed a lot there. They didn't suffer from the Great Depression. Army professionalism went up (just in time). If the communists didn't took over the USSR, they wouldn't have been able to defend against Hitler, and now they were able to (including the purges). Russia must be thankful for their communist age, because it did set them on the world map, and they transitioned from a non-relevant power that was breaking up (like Ottoman Empire) intoo the second most powerful state that even achieved a lot (space age), and was arguably even more advanced than the USA on science.

 

[Disgustipated]

I still to this day have no idea why that was moved away from.

Because some people like me couldn't stand Civ5. If you want tall empires, go play Civ5.

 

[Vahnstad]

Because some people like me couldn't stand Civ5. If you want tall empires, go play Civ5.

same here, i hate civ 5. I prefer a thousand times more civ 6 with it's ai, than the worst civ game ever: civ 5. I played civ 6 more 3 times more than civ 5, and it's still one year after the release of vanilla. Going wide is not viable in civ 5 (at least not for me).

 

[ferretbacon]

On the topic of governors, I'm surprised that they seem to have fixed names that disregard the culture you're playing. It seems to me that they could have been randomized like the spies. I wonder if they'll have an option to rename them?

 

[nzcamel]

Army professionalism went up (just in time). If the communists didn't took over the USSR, they wouldn't have been able to defend against Hitler, and now they were able to (including the purges).

Righto Vahnstad

But we're getting off topic, so I'll leave it there.

Because some people like me couldn't stand Civ5. If you want tall empires, go play Civ5.

same here, i hate civ 5. I prefer a thousand times more civ 6 with it's ai, than the worst civ game ever: civ 5. I played civ 6 more 3 times more than civ 5, and it's still one year after the release of vanilla. Going wide is not viable in civ 5 (at least not for me).

What the hell are you two on about??
I was talking about how CIV (i.e. Civ IV...i.e. Civ 4) had it right, not V.

(CIV = 4, CiV = 5)

Moderator Action: When you use confusing abbreviations don't be surprised if people get confused! Why not stick to the clear Civ 4, 5 & 6? --NobleZarkon

 

[God of Kings]

(CIV = 4, CiV = 5)

CiVI = 6

 

[nzcamel]

CiVI = 6

Civi lol

 

[Disgustipated]

Civ4 was alright. But it was often difficult to form large empires until later in the game. Alexander of Macedon would disagree.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Civ4 was alright. But it was often difficult to form large empires until later in the game. Alexander of Macedon would disagree.

He did do that but it imploded very quickly.

 

[darkace77450]

He did do that but it imploded very quickly.

He shouldn't have ignored the Loyalty system.

 

[Uberfrog]

He shouldn't have ignored the Loyalty system.

(Un)Fortunately, the in-game Alexander doesn't have to worry about anything so pesky as dying at the peak of his conquests.

 

[bbbt]

My impression is the ages are basically triggered ala eurekas/CS missions/game achievements (i.e. do x y or z) but that there's a combo of you can choose which ones you set as your goal (rather than having to hit all of them).

If done well it will encourage general Civ and victory condition planning (allowing intermediate goals along your path), can provide balance for different playstyle/approaches, and add a cool sense of immersion with the timeline.

If done poorly it's going to make games feel very formulaic. Unfortunately that line can be thin sometimes but fingers crossed.

 

[Vahnstad]

Righto Vahnstad

But we're getting off topic, so I'll leave it there.

You can also ignore the facts, and keep listening to your anti-communist / western propaganda, if you are that naive to believe we / they don't tell lies. The numbers are impressive, check the demographics / their achievements (in space, in education and social security) / their war efforts & tactics and they influenced our societies, since Europe rapidly reformed social institutions, because they were afraid of a communist take-over here too.

I'm not saying they didn't made their mistakes, or that Stalin wasn't a cruel man (because he was, but the Tsars were cruel men too), but you can ignore the accomplishments, especially of early USSR, and especially if you see how they evolved from mainly an agrarian (and poor) society into what is known as the USSR. That's no evolution. That's a never seen revolution until today (and a very good one). To me, there is no bad or good guy in the Cold War, like most in the western world state.

 

[PhilBowles]

Exactly.

(I hope I'm gonna be able to keep this short... God knows I haven't always been able to in the past)

There are two different ways to 'balance' wide vs tall against one another. Assuming wide is better without balancing, as it means more cities, one way to balance is to penalize wide, while the other is to give bonuses to tall.

In Civilization V, we saw the balancing done by penalizing wide. To be precise, global happiness slowed down any expansion to a trickle - if you were to build one city too much in the early game, all your cities would basically stop growing. Additionally, if you happened to conquer like, two cities while you were doing fine in happiness, you took a hit of sometimes as much as thirty happiness to your balance - enough that you'd immediately have to stop conquering due to happiness problems. Might be fine on a standard map size still, but if you're looking to conquer the world on a huge map, you'll probably need to conquer sixty, seventy cities if not more - a very daunting task if happiness problems already arise at two cities.

And that's the minor of the two main penalties. The bigger one is every city owned artificially increasing the costs of any technologies or social policies you're researching. There's not much more to be said about this.

These mechanics combined created a kind of a scale of the total usefulness of your empire. If you have very few cities, then an additional city is an improvement (as you get twice as many yields from two cities as you do from one, ignoring any additional mechanics). If you have a lot of cities, however, a new city costs you more than it gets you - yes, you may gain a few culture per turn, but less than you need to compensate for that 5% increase in social policy cost. In fact, fewer cities might allow you to advance faster. This together makes for a sweet spot - less cities is worse, but so is more cities. In the case of Civ 5, which also had a bunch of social policies affecting four cities only, this sweet spot was at 4 cities - it was better than having 3, and it was also better than having 5.

The other mechanic, however, is giving bonuses to tall. First of all, bonuses to tall mean that you don't give up anything by building a new city. This means that there is never a number of cities after which a new city is a bad thing, as long as it is free; it may only give you two science, one culture and enough gold to pay it's own maintenance costs, but it still gives you two science and one culture. However, there is still a minor cost to expanding, one that is intrinsically related to Civilization's gameplay - you have to either build a settler and settle the city (worth the cost in the vast majority of the cases, which is a good thing as it means the map will fill fully) or you have to build an army, declare war, suffer a diplomatic (and happiness) penalty and go ahead and conquer a city - in quite a few more cases not worth it (assuming proper balance, let that be clear). This means that, while it is never a bad idea to expand, it may be a worse idea than doing something else - like build a wonder from that production you'd pour into your army otherwise.

Additionally, there can be bonuses specifically linked to tall. A bonus for reaching a certain size for example, or city-size depending trade route yields (sadly absent from Civ VI for the most part). These bonuses may only be accessible when building a few big cities and not spending food and production on expanding, but you're making a tradeoff - either you build a settler or you let the city grow for a size bonus - instead of getting punished for one of the decisions.

Basically, penalties are bad, bonuses and choices/tradeoffs are good.

The problem is, you can't easily reward going tall without indirectly boosting going wide - the biggest reasons going wide is better than going tall are (a) population grows faster in smaller cities, and (b) larger cities have more production slots and tiles to work. Neither of these can really be adjusted without changing how cities work, and you can't change how cities work to favour tall (which means gaining advantages for individual cities) without rewarding the civ that has more cities ... which brings us back to favouring wide. We saw this in Civ V in the Tradition tree, which was meant to favour tall play but ended up being better than Liberty for all but the widest wide play as well. If you give an individual city the option to build something that gives it extra production slots or expands its workable city radius, for instance, you end up with the same problem.

Civ V took exactly the right approach given an objective to balance tall vs. wide, and people who regard the penalties as excessive appear not to realise just how favoured a civ is naturally from expansion. Civ V was also its own worst enemy here as it produced science directly from population, a resource wide empires will always have more of than tall ones.

The lesson to learn from Civ V isn't that its balancing of tall vs. wide failed, it's that tall vs. wide is the wrong focus. Tall play, it turns out, simply isn't very engaging, because as tedious as managing 30 cities can be and as repetitively rinse-and-repeat the build orders are for any city with specialisation X, it restricts decisions based on the map - particularly where to settle - to the earliest game stages, and discourages conquest. With that alone eXpand and eXterminate are weakened and you have reduced incentives to eXplore. You don't even have to do much eXploiting after you set your resource improvements up and can work most tiles.

The result is that Civ V managed a better strategic balance between tall and wide than any other Civ game, and one far closer to parity than its detractors assert (tall is easier, but not necessarily the most efficient way to play), but that didn't translate into a strategically fulfilling game despite that.

I still maintain it's a better game than Civ VI - though the last Civ VI patch turned out to be a huge improvement - and it may still be my favourite entry in the series, but it's a better game from a strategy game design perspective than it is from an actual gameplay perspective.