Should the building cost price increase mechanism in the current version be weakened or cancelled?

[tedhebert]

in all these great ideas about Urban Centers, let’s not forget that they are NEEDED in order to house great works in both antiquity and exploration (and even in modern as a matter of fact). If we don’t want to be forced to make cities to house them, we NEED urban centers ! I’m usually at around 3 cities throughout the game so I need them. I know it’s not the meta especially in antiquity, but I’m just not a min/maxer and I find that 3 cities/5 towns ratio in antiquity and 3-4/10 ratio in explo s fine for my play tastes

 

[Krikkit1]

It already gives reduced maintainance... Maybe it only gives yields from those buildings while you are in urban center mode.

I still think it would be a more interesting gameplay choice if the different towns each gave a different building personally...

I put the new part in bold (added cost and boosted yields)

 

[magicq99]

My take on the initial question: I'm so far fine with the +5% cost increase per building present in the city. This makes you prioritize the imporant buildings instead of just building everything.

But I am less sure about the +10% increase per city. With this change I kind off hesitate to convert towns to cites, because it will slow down the development of my other cities.

In my understanding this change is intented to balance "tall" and "wide". But in my perception this change biases the balance towards "tall". I can think of other options here, that may be better, for example the cost of conversion to a city could vastly increase with the number of cities you already have. Or the maintenance costs of all cities could increase with the number of cities or for more distant cities.

If I remember correctly, Civ IV had something like the latter, with city maintenance cost increasing with the number of cities and distance from palace. In my opinion such an approach may also act as a balance between "tall" and "wide", without giving you the feeling that you hurt the development of your other cities with any new city you establish.

 

[MutilationWave]

Or the maintenance costs of all cities could increase with the number of cities or for more distant cities.

I don't think you should be punished by distance. This was a major part of the corruption mechanic in civ 3 and it was terrible.

 

[Leucarum]

I definitely like the goal of encouraging players to have 3-5 cities max by end game while still letting other settlements contribute.

If you can't make the end game good, make it less micromanagement-y...

 

[Stomper66]

This stuff should all be strengthened to encourage a tall vs wide playstyle. Otherwise it becomes like civ6 just a dumbed down race to victory for whoever can spam the most cities.

 

[Siptah]

How about a chance to influence those penalty values for having many cities, say with governments, attributes or policies? Of course, these would need to come with their own penalties of some sort otherwise players will just go with whatever makes a 10% into a 5% penalty or a 0. Well, maybe fairly down the expansionist tree could work without penalty. Or introduce a building that mitigates some of the increase. Otherwise, I could see a policy or government that goes less penalty, but also less settlement limit.

 

[Sagax]

Yeah, while the overall intention is understandable and something I can get behind, the 10% increase feels rough, reaching kind of absurd levels of constraint in Modern. As if this age needed more gameplay problems...

I thought, after the whole rollercoaster with the Maya UQ, Gold/Silver, and attribute trees, we've learned our lesson on how dangerous percentages can be in this game. But I guess not.

 

[Krikkit1]

Yeah, while the overall intention is understandable and something I can get behind, the 10% increase feels rough, reaching kind of absurd levels of constraint in Modern. As if this age needed more gameplay problems...

I thought, after the whole rollercoaster with the Maya UQ, Gold/Silver, and attribute trees, we've learned our lesson on how dangerous percentages can be in this game. But I guess not.

It counts Cities not Settlements.... if you have 10 cities they only get a +100% to build costs (and if they are developed in Exploration, they already have ~+60% to +70% from their previous buildings so another +100% isn't that much of a relative increase).... and if you are running more than 10 cities... well that's what this is meant to discourage you from doing. (at least if you want to develop them and then you need a vast number of towns so you can just buy the buildings.)

 

[magicq99]

I definitely like the goal of encouraging players to have 3-5 cities max by end game while still letting other settlements contribute.

I disagree here. I think there are some civs which are designed to be played "wide" even before the modern age.

For example, the unique quarter of the Majapahit gives +10% gold towards converting a town into a city. This is a weak bonus if a lower number of cities is considered to always be preferable.

I actually think that this unique quarter in particular demonstrates the issue I have with the +10% cost increase for each city. Because this cost increase actually penalizes you for making a lot of use of this unique quarter, which I think are supposed to be widely used.

Also consider Spain. The Siglo de Oro special ability also gives +15% gold towards converting towns into cities, even +30% in distand lands. Every time you invoke this ability however, the cost for buildings now increases for every city. So if I play Spain, should I not convert a lot of towns into cities in distand lands?

There are also a lot of traditions which give a bonus to cities only, for example "Throne of My Fathers" (Aksum), which gives bonus gold in coastal cities. So I think that Aksum is also designed to be played with a lot of (in this case coastal) cities rather than towns.

Therefore I think there should not be a universal goal of having 3-5 cities max by end game. The optimal number of cities should instead be based on specific playstyles for each leader and/or civ.

EDIT: Mongolia also has a civic which makes converting captured towns into cities cheaper.

In my opinion these effects (which give extra gold toward converting towns into cities) give you a larger benefit the sooner you convert a town, because the gold cost of conversion is less for larger towns. But this also means that you have to use this ability when the newly converted city will be the least productive, which makes the resulting cost increase for buildings in all your cities very penalizing.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I disagree here. I think there are some civs which are designed to be played "wide" even before the modern age.

Yep, some civilizations have discounts on upgrades from towns to cities as before it was the main stopping factor. I believe those civilizations should have reduced penalties from the number of cities instead (or in addition to, depending on balance considerations).

 

[UWHabs]

Playing my next game with this... and i think I'm liking it more as a balance. At least the cost per building, it makes me be more strategic about my buildings, so I'm actually consciously skipping some buildings. Like I have a city which is not the strongest, and converted relatively later in the era, and don't have a lot of adjacency spots, so I've decided to skip the Barracks and jump straight to the Blacksmith. Maybe I'll circle back, and maybe the math would say otherwise, but I think I'm basically going to skip all the T1 buildings and get the better expensive ones out of the way, so the costs don't jump as much. Even my crazy productive capital, I really don't think I'm going to get all the buildings in, since I only have one tile with a mountain, I'm just not going to get all the culture buildings built there.

And because of some of that, you also start to take other considerations. So my capital doesn't have those mountains, I should make sure city 2 or city 3 can get those culture buildings, because I'm not going to get that from my main city. Or even just deciding to convert to a city a few turns later to not impact all your other cities.

I think those other civs mentioned that maybe benefit from the other style, perhaps the game should just give them an extra bonus. Give the Majapahit or Spain a free 50% reduction on the cost increase from converting to a city. Give Mongolia something where captured cities don't increase the building cost for your other cities. There's other balance you can play with in the mechanism. But now that I understand it a little, I'm definitely liking some of the strategic implications.

 

[Evolena]

It was the first step on a wider balance effort, so no doubt Civs and Leaders will be affected more later, after more observations of the current state.

This is just the first step in our ongoing effort to improve balance. We’re continuing to evaluate all Yields, Leader and Civ abilities, and opportunities to add new systems and tweaks that deepen strategic decision-making. This pass lays the foundation for much more significant systems and content to come.

Source for the citation: https://civilization.2k.com/civ-vii/game-update-notes/

 

[magicq99]

It was the first step on a wider balance effort, so no doubt Civs and Leaders will be affected more later, after more observations of the current state.

That is true. And I think a closer look is especially needed for the Civs which are supposed to be played wide ("wide" in this context not meaning that they have a larger settlement cap, but rather that they are supposed to have an incentive to convert more of their towns into cities than other civs would)

 

[Evolena]

I was suprised that amongst all the balance adjustements, there were no Civ or Leader ones (only the Napoleons rework, a minor Catherine adjestement, and an Abbasid nerf that seemed more to make then more in line with the others's attractiveness that related to the balance pass), so I don't know how there couldn't be some in a future (and soonish rather than later) update.

 

[Krikkit1]

I was suprised that amongst all the balance adjustements, there were no Civ or Leader ones (only the Napoleons rework, a minor Catherine adjestement, and an Abbasid nerf that seemed more to make then more in line with the others's attractiveness that related to the balance pass), so I don't know how there couldn't be some in a future (and soonish rather than later) update.

Actually that is very Not surprising. Generally you want balance adjustments in discrete chunks so you can see the effect. Right now they get to see the effect of the universal yield changes. Based on that they can then see how over/underpowered specific civs/leaders are in that environment.... then they can have the tweaks.

 

[magicq99]

That makes sense. However, this also means that we won't have a balanced game until there have been several iterative balance passes.

And changes in one area may make it necessary to reconsider past changes in another. For example, they did a rebalance on world wonders not very long ago. But with the yield changes to the buildings, the yields of some wonders appear very weak now. So they may have to rebalance them again in view of the building yields.

 

[UWHabs]

That makes sense. However, this also means that we won't have a balanced game until there have been several iterative balance passes.

And changes in one area may make it necessary to reconsider past changes in another. For example, they did a rebalance on world wonders not very long ago. But with the yield changes to the buildings, the yields of some wonders appear very weak now. So they may have to rebalance them again in view of the building yields.

It's always an iterative process. Sometimes you can foresee things, sometimes you can't.

While wonder yields aren't great since the building rebalance, at the same time, since building costs have increased, wonders are often cheaper than a building. I think production is a little easier to come by than before, so arguably you could increase the cost of wonders by maybe 25%, but boost the yields of them by maybe 50% from where they are now, and they wouldn't be in a bad place.

 

[Krikkit1]

That makes sense. However, this also means that we won't have a balanced game until there have been several iterative balance passes.

And changes in one area may make it necessary to reconsider past changes in another. For example, they did a rebalance on world wonders not very long ago. But with the yield changes to the buildings, the yields of some wonders appear very weak now. So they may have to rebalance them again in view of the building yields.

A game is never "balanced" just like a game is never "finished" there is only the point at which they stop making changes, but there are ALWAYS changes that could potentially make the game better or more balanced.

 

[WillK96]

I just finished my 3rd play-through of 1.2.5 and the penalty gets rather absurd in the modern age, even with 3-5 cities and even with a large amount of overbuilding (to keep the total # of buildings low in the cities). I generally like the intent, and I like that it pushes the players to utilize overbuilding to minimize city sprawl (a good, if unintended consequence, also not sure if the AI grasps this concept).

Part of the problem seems to be that the game is "designed" around changing which settlements are cities and towns in each age (e.g. the game devs discourage an Antiquity City from being a Modern City), but it is difficult to properly build up new cities out of towns in the Modern age given the (1) general lack of "good" city-specific locations and (2) the increased importance of prior aged buildings, specifically production buildings.