Science

[Lmaoboat]

I always spam lumber mills and mines everywhere since I'm a production addict. If I'm not building wonders in single digit turns on standard, I get upset.

 

[Thalassicus]

We could try the numbers below, which provide nice effects:

• Science comes less from population.
• Monasteries have a realistic mix of culture and science.
• Science has 4 main buildings to the 3 buildings of other yields, so it's unique.
• The percentage of science coming from scientists and the library is about the same as before.
• Villages remain a low-percentage contributor so gameplay doesn't change too much.
• I'm assuming this hypothetical player built no villages in v154 (doesn't matter for this), and builds a few per city in v154.1.

........

Summary of changes:

• Tech costs changed to keep research pace the same.
• 15 per player (was 5) to help the early game and favor tall empires.
• 1 per (was 2 per 1).
• +1 Villages with Writing.

Temple
5 (was 6)
1 on luxuries useful for religious ceremonies (cloth, dye, add wine & incense)
​

Monastery
2 (was 4)
2 (was 0)
25% (was 0) (+10% with Theocracy)
(wine/incense bonus moved to Temples)
​

 

[Txurce]

We could try these numbers:

Monastery
2
2
25% (and +10% with Theocracy)
​

This seems like a realistic mix of culture and science for monasteries. Temples get the wine/incense +1 bonus. The percentage of science coming from scientists and the library is about the same as before. The new percentage from villages is relatively low.

Out of context, this switch makes sense, except for the Theocracy boost (huh?). But what is the context? What new village percentage? What about tall civs not getting nerfed? (Etc., etc.)

And would the temple base culture be nerfed, or the hammer cost raised, in light of its buff?

 

[Thalassicus]

Theocracy didn't change, it has these effects:

+10% temples
+10% monasteries
+10% in cities with a World Wonder
​

The village percentage is the % of science coming from villages. The table drops science slightly in small undeveloped cities and stays about the same in large developed cities (up to 7% higher if the player works more villages).

 

[Txurce]

Theocracy didn't change, it has these effects:

+10% Gold from Temples.
+10% Science from Monasteries.
+10% Culture in cities with a World Wonder.
​

The village percentage is the % of science coming from villages. The table reduces science in short cities and raises science in tall empires.

Did you add the table after first posting about the Monastery change? I was actually going to joke about your post missing its first paragraph.

Anyway, having now looked at the table, I think it's a simple, effective basis for achieving your goal, with various ways to further tune, if necessary, for the AI. It looks really good with regard to tall vs wide.

Questions:

1. It seems to me as if the extra pop from farms outperforms the village science boost, but at a cost of happiness and less gold that creates a circumstantial alternative. Is that correct?

2. My earlier one about temple costs/benefits (keeping in mind that nerfing culture overall is not a bad idea).

3. Should Theocracy be reduced, given the boosts to temples and monasteries?

 

[Zaldron]

1. It seems to me as if the extra pop from farms outperforms the village science boost, but at a cost of happiness and less gold that creates a circumstantial alternative. Is that correct?

I'm "fairly worried" about this as an indirect nerf to tall empires, but I'm willing to give it a try as this seems a fairly reasonable approach. The reason I say that it may be a nerf is because I suspect that the extra food from farms=>growth will still be more valuable for a tall empire (so you lose a fair amount of base science) because of multipliers but it may be that the new monastery bonus helps the individual cities enough. However on non-capital tall cities villages may become more strategic since there are fewer multipliers (NWs) against pop-based state, so for example on a river with freedom it may be better for the 3gold/1 sci from a village than the 3 food from a farm.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm thinking about renaming "Monastery" to "Faith School." Educational facilities linked to a religious organization have been common all throughout history. In the expansion we could even change the 2 culture yield to faith.

@Txurce
You quoted the table?

I suspect Theocracy isn't a high priority for most people, so I'm not concerned about that policy.

@Zaldron
I think tall empires will be better off:

• Aqueducts earlier in the tech tree and lower cost (v153).
• New percentage modifier for science (v153.1).
• Higher per-player science (v153.1).

If food is a concern we can add some to Aqueducts.

 

[Txurce]

@Txurce
You quoted the table.

If food is a concern we can add some to Aqueducts.

Thanks. Quoting is one thing - comprehending another!

I don't think food will be a concern - if anything, you've made it a little easier to grow. The way for someone like me (and probably Zaldron) to test this is to play a game according to our traditional strategy (plus a fast monastery) and see how we do, in comparison to a game that takes villages and gold more into consideration. (By the way, this is why I rarely try all-new strategies. I'm always testing tall vs wide science in beta after beta after beta...)

On a side note, I now realize why culture seemed so slow in my last game... you changed it. Mission accomplished, I think.

Finally, "Faith School" sounds a little creepy to me. Isn't "monastery" a fairly universal, non-denominational term that's been in use since it appears on the tech tree?

 

[gunnergoz]

We could always call it a "Madrasa" and really get people stirred up.

 

[Txurce]

We could always call it a "Madrasa" and really get people stirred up.

Very funny!

 

[Zaldron]

I suspect Theocracy isn't a high priority for most people, so I'm not concerned about that policy.

It's always a high priority for me in my culture games, sometimes even before the happy-on-culture-building policy in piety. Of course I get it strictly for the culture on WWs, not the science or gold benefits.

 

[Zaldron]

On a side note, I now realize why culture seemed so slow in my last game... you changed it. Mission accomplished, I think.

Finally, "Faith School" sounds a little creepy to me. Isn't "monastery" a fairly universal, non-denominational term that's been in use since it appears on the tech tree?

Ironically, in the game I just finished, while culture seemed slower to me science seemed to have slowed *more* than culture so I was even farther behind in tech when I built utopia (To give a picture, I built SOH the same turn I *earned* the last needed policy the hard way) and had only a handful of modern techs and hadn't finished industrial yet. According to my autosave (I exited after the win) I won around turn 288. I figure I had at least 100 more turns before I would have attained a science win.

Also I agree that Monastery sounds just fine to me.

 

[Txurce]

Ironically, in the game I just finished, while culture seemed slower to me science seemed to have slowed *more* than culture so I was even farther behind in tech when I built utopia (To give a picture, I built SOH the same turn I *earned* the last needed policy the hard way) and had only a handful of modern techs and hadn't finished industrial yet. According to my autosave (I exited after the win) I won around turn 288. I figure I had at least 100 more turns before I would have attained a science win.

Also I agree that Monastery sounds just fine to me.

I had the same sort of results in my v153.11 game. But we're in a brand-new ballgame once Thal uploads v154.1!

 

[Seek]

Looks interesting, and I'm nearly convinced that moving science away from citizens and into the countryside is a good move, but I remain concerned about balance with the above proposal. Some thoughts:

• I think making villages -1 will become a necessary eventuality - there needs to be a downside to working predominantly all villages, especially in grassland cities which will have a huge science advantage. The issue with adding food to buildings like the Aqueduct is that it's not any less available in cities with high food than low food. I'd argue that villages should have -1 as well - since we'll see so many more village tiles worked, gold will become overabundant (again). If villages are going to have serious science potential, they cannot provide 4 and 2 - we're going to see a 180° shift away from mines, lumbermills and farms into villages - without balancing measures, the game will become one-dimensional.
• Monasteries look too strong - they're cheap and they come available at nearly the same time as Universities. Happily, there are a number of ways to address this:
  1. Lower the science bonus (not ideal)
  2. Drop the bonus on Theocracy (or change it to something else)
  3. Make Piety and Enlightenment exclusive again (I know I sound like a broken record with this, but I strongly think that it makes for a better game).
  4. Move Monasteries back in the tech tree (maybe to Acoustics?)
  5. Move Monasteries to a different branch altogether on the tech tree (to make it difficult to get both Monis and Unis simultaneously and skyrocket through tech)
  6. Make Monasteries and Universities exclusive, returning the wine/incense bonus to the Monastery (least preferable to me, but I thought I'd mention it). (I agree the name is fine as is.)
• Perhaps the village science can be buffed by some policy that wide empires will want to avoid, in order to make this viable for tall empires (we may have to introduce a SP-tree-exclusivity for this). Or we could think of some alternate science buff for tall empires - I personally think it should be necessary to have at least a half-dozen cities to viably go for science victories, but small/tall empires should be at least competetive scientifically.
• Science on villages at Writing will make that tech even more necessary to beeline to than it already is, but I don't have a better suggestion for where to put it (unless we adopt Txurce's suggestion and make it available in the Renaissance era, but that shifts the balance in the proposal). I'm thinking that some tech tree rearranging might be in order, but the ancient era is so cramped already I don't see a way to do it logically - the best I've got is to make Writing require AH.

 

[Prodigyx732]

You could increase tech cost by X% for each city you have.

It would work pretty much the same way does. Except you should make a fine balance between tall and wide.

Perhaps it doesn't make much sense, but neither does spamming your way to a science victory. I realize this would probably be hard to balance, and you may need to add more science buildings/wonders. But this is why larger maps influence how much science you need for a tech, cause you'll most likely have more cities.

 

[AlextheGr8]

Is this the topic I can complain about the AI advancing in science? It's ridiculous. With v154, difficulty level "let me relax" and wow. The AI is unbelievable in advancing. Gandhi just go to the Industrial Era and I'm in the Medieval!

 

[Dunkah]

I'm trying to follow along with this thread but not doing a very good job of it....

The thing that I loved about viliages in Civ IV was that if you could get them to Cities they were supperior to any other improvement, however working them cost you in the short term and they could be squashed by an invasion. Plus having a huge metropolis around your cities just looked so freakin' cool!

I love the dynamic of Civ IV villiages and I love the fact that you could hurt someone by taking them out. It's a great gameplay aspect of Civ IV which is missing from Civ V. Anything we could do to bring this back would be awesome.

I love the idea of adding science to them! Currently there is almost no way other than conquering and removing population from cities to hurt a Civ that is ahead in science.

New Idea: It would be cool that instead of simply detroying them when you pilliaged them that you could pop a unit on top of one and get a lump sum of gold or science or culture or whatever each turn. Perhaps after a while they would drop back down to the town or villiage level. But could spawn a whole new way to fight wars!

I would also like to see Culture and Science separated more. It doesn't ever seem as if I can get a science victory without also being able to achive a culture victory as a consequence. (perhaps that's why I don't achive victories as fast as everyone else).

Seek's idea of:
Make Piety and Enlightenment exclusive again (I know I sound like a broken record with this, but I strongly think that it makes for a better game).

Sounds good to me also, Second that motion!

It would be really cool if buildings could be made that were exclusive of each other as well. Weather they contributed to Science or Culture or Hammers on villiages or simply were city wide. So if you build this building you can't build this... etc.

For example:
If you could build a Commercial Zoning Project that allowed factories to be built in villiages providig bonus hammers, or an Artistic Initative that increased Culture, or perhaps a Science Fair for a Science bonus, you could even do like an Exposition Center that would allow you to build villiages that had all of the above as bonus resources. Perhaps it costs so much per turn or something like that.

New Idea: How about a Commercial Center/Cultural Center/Science Center/Industrial Center improvement that gave a bonus itself but also allowed all the villiages around it to have bonus resources. Thus could be really effective if built in an open area.

 

[Seek]

Unfortunately we can't have buildings affect improvements - ridiculous, I know, since buildings can affect resources (like Cattle or Incense) and tile features (like Forest or Jungle). Improvements can only be affected via tech tree or SPs currently. Yet another unfathomable coding decision by Firaxis.

If Thal can figure that out, his proposition would be much easier to balance.

 

[Dunkah]

Is it possible to make the old styled villiages that grow? Like Civ IV?

 

[Seek]

Yes, but Thal worries that introducing such a mechanic would drastically increase between-turn times. (I would love to see that for Great People improvements!)