So wide play will clearly be viable... but will tall play?

[KrikkitTwo]

One thing I've been thinking that would balance wide and open up strats for tall, and improve the in game metaphors a lot*, is tying city trade route count to pop.

So, a new city needs a trade depot (or a depot plus 5 pop) to send out (not receive, to be fair obviously) one TR, but it needs 5 or 10 pop to send out a second. At 15 pop a city gets a third. At 20, 25, 30, it gets 1 more (we all know how food-to-next-pop cost skyrockets after 20 so these are diminishing returns for all but the most pumped-up city).

A tall empire, with cities 2 through 4 owning 4 routes each, looks a lot better now.

There also needs to be serious road requirements for internal TR hammer and food yields. Given worker slowness, road requirements would be very difficult for a wide empire to balance with other needs.

These two changes would return new city growth to being a slow challenge as was advertised with the advent of the outposts system in the first place.

*One of the most irksome things about the current TR system is, when I'm sending 16 or so hammers to my new 1 pop city from the capital, who is even unpacking these materials? How is a city with no population able to run a dock with the same throughput as my capital? And not just unload these 16 hammers, and somehow eat 8 food, but send off 8 hammers, and 4 food, and still build their own buildings? This is beyond abstraction, this is nonsense. New cities on an alien planet that don't even have roads built to them can't send out hammers or food. Meanwhile, why is my capital which on turn 200 is the New York of this new planet, only able to send out the same number of TRs as it was 15 population ago?

I think that it would be better to tie trade route yield to sender city population/output (essentially make trade routes the % booster)

However, having the trade depot give 1 trade route and getting 1 more per 10 pop would be good (especially if it was also based on the yield of the city)
... ie new cities give +10% more of their base output from trade routes, size 10 cities give 20%, size 30 cities give 40%, etc.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

I tend to think that there was no intention to have a viable tall play. Think of it if the mapsizes are the same with Civ V, how would you fill out the whole map with only 8 factions. The change to stations compared to city-states have their contribution to a more empty map. So gamewise i think this is done on purpose. Also from affinity aspect you want that your affinity will dominate the others so each affinity should try to have as much land as possible and so go wide.
The things that look like to favor tall like culture&science modifiers and the settling duration seem to me more a temporary obstruction so that every faction has a good chance to settle enough cities and not only 1 or 2 players who spam cities everywhere.

 

[Cyon]

Maybe tall could be slightly widened by for example introducing some building quests and virtues that only give a certain bonus to your first six buildings of that type, so the auto plant would only give you a extra trade route in you first six cities that you build it in.

 

[Cyon]

You could also let negative health add extra turns it take to for an outpost to be a City, with - 37 health it could take 37 turns extra...

 

[Matthew.]

While Civ5 was too harsh on wide plays, the other way around doesn't look that more interesting and brings its fair share of problems. For example, it starts to make Prosperity and Industry look like your bread and butter virtues with something like Eudaimonia.

Perhaps. But I think there is more interaction with wide play, on average. It pains me every time someone links a Civ 5 screenshot of a Deity win where 3 little dots are crammed in the corner of the map, no military is built, and just blows past Hiawatha who has half the map and tons of science. Sure, it is amusing the first few times, and sure there is a point about giving options in games where enemies gobble up all the land too quickly, but is this really a good strategy game?

 

[Sprenk]

Perhaps. But I think there is more interaction with wide play, on average. It pains me every time someone links a Civ 5 screenshot of a Deity win where 3 little dots are crammed in the corner of the map, no military is built, and just blows past Hiawatha who has half the map and tons of science. Sure, it is amusing the first few times, and sure there is a point about giving options in games where enemies gobble up all the land too quickly, but is this really a good strategy game?

But what if those "three little dots" have the Sistine Chapel, Uffizi, Globe Theater, Louvre, etc., all chock full of great works? What if the citizens of every nation flock to visit, using this small nation's hotels and airports?

There's just as much important work being done to win such a game as to win Hiawatha style . . . but now we're talking BNW, not BE. The point is that it would be nice if there's victory options available for both wide and tall strategies in BE.

 

[Tomice]

So, a new city needs a trade depot (or a depot plus 5 pop) to send out (not receive, to be fair obviously) one TR, but it needs 5 or 10 pop to send out a second. At 15 pop a city gets a third. At 20, 25, 30, it gets 1 more (we all know how food-to-next-pop cost skyrockets after 20 so these are diminishing returns for all but the most pumped-up city).

This is a very good suggestion and should be easy enough to do for a patch.

1st TR from depot
2nd at 6 population
3rd at 12
4th at 18

or something in this sense.



I do however agree that going wide was too heavily punished in BNW. Having more than 4-5 cities was only worth it if the place was super-awesome.
I never liked if the map remained mostly empty even after the middle ages, that's just ahistoric.

 

[Ryika]

I think tall in a sense of "I'll get X cities and then stop expanding" is.. overall just bad design. Tall should focus on slower expansion and more emphasis on bigger cities, but getting more cities once the old ones are doing fine should always be a benefit (well, except for the last 50-80 turns or so). That's the only way that space actually matters and that enforces conflicts instead of rewarding a player for acquiring his/her territory and then sitting around for 200 turns without really doing anything except some simple city management. "5 City Tall" is okay for some easy games, but "masterclass" should enforce finding solutions - although they don't have to be military solutions - to conflicts and confrontations instead of focusing on how to avoid conflicts like Civ 5 did.

...but that's just my opinion of course. Still... I'm fine with tall and wide switching places. I'd rather have "ultra-tall" be unplayable for now and "relatively wide, with an emphasis on tall cities" becoming the new "tall" instead of repeating what Civ 5 did.

 

[Velasti]

One thing I've been thinking that would balance wide and open up strats for tall, and improve the in game metaphors a lot*, is tying city trade route count to pop.

So, a new city needs a trade depot (or a depot plus 5 pop) to send out (not receive, to be fair obviously) one TR, but it needs 5 or 10 pop to send out a second. At 15 pop a city gets a third. At 20, 25, 30, it gets 1 more (we all know how food-to-next-pop cost skyrockets after 20 so these are diminishing returns for all but the most pumped-up city).

A tall empire, with cities 2 through 4 owning 4 routes each, looks a lot better now.

There also needs to be serious road requirements for internal TR hammer and food yields. Given worker slowness, road requirements would be very difficult for a wide empire to balance with other needs.

These two changes would return new city growth to being a slow challenge as was advertised with the advent of the outposts system in the first place.

*One of the most irksome things about the current TR system is, when I'm sending 16 or so hammers to my new 1 pop city from the capital, who is even unpacking these materials? How is a city with no population able to run a dock with the same throughput as my capital? And not just unload these 16 hammers, and somehow eat 8 food, but send off 8 hammers, and 4 food, and still build their own buildings? This is beyond abstraction, this is nonsense. New cities on an alien planet that don't even have roads built to them can't send out hammers or food. Meanwhile, why is my capital which on turn 200 is the New York of this new planet, only able to send out the same number of TRs as it was 15 population ago?

That's one way of looking at it...

Another way of looking at it is that the trade-route represents one city sending labour to another. I.e. you're not just sending goods, but you're also sending services. Think about the recovery after a natural disaster - to rebuild, you don't just need to send building materials, you also need to send the skilled professionals and labourers and so on to actually do the job.

I think it's more realistic to look at production as also including all of the infrastructure necessary for production, both the human capital and the goods/services.

With population - well, temporary accommodation isn't permanent population, is it?

 

[Haggbart]

Maybe tall could be slightly widened by for example introducing some building quests and virtues that only give a certain bonus to your first six buildings of that type, so the auto plant would only give you a extra trade route in you first six cities that you build it in.

I wouldn't mind some incentives for going tall, like some national wonders that requires buildings in all cities and your suggestion on limiting the quests to a certain number of buildings ( that might be a choice in the quest too: do I want a small bonus for an unlimited number of said building, or a big bonus for the first 3-4 of them?). It dosn't need to be as lucrative as in CiV, but a viable option.

Most of all I wish the health system would give a proper reward for positive health since the punishment for negative health is too low to care too much about.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I think tall in a sense of "I'll get X cities and then stop expanding" is.. overall just bad design. Tall should focus on slower expansion and more emphasis on bigger cities, but getting more cities once the old ones are doing fine should always be a benefit (well, except for the last 50-80 turns or so). That's the only way that space actually matters and that enforces conflicts instead of rewarding a player for acquiring his/her territory and then sitting around for 200 turns without really doing anything except some simple city management. "5 City Tall" is okay for some easy games, but "masterclass" should enforce finding solutions - although they don't have to be military solutions - to conflicts and confrontations instead of focusing on how to avoid conflicts like Civ 5 did.

...but that's just my opinion of course. Still... I'm fine with tall and wide switching places. I'd rather have "ultra-tall" be unplayable for now and "relatively wide, with an emphasis on tall cities" becoming the new "tall" instead of repeating what Civ 5 did.

I agree with this.
Tall is NOT about having few cities anyway, but about having generaly well developed cities with large pop, the same thing as having low C/P ratio.

A large empire or rather a powerful empire not to confuse large with just alot of crappy cities should allways defeat smal empires in the long run, and in most games you should reach the long run.
The ai hower should be alot more harder to deal with if your powerful and should sometimes try to team against you.

 

[omniclast]

I agrea with this.
Tall is NOT about having few cities anyway, but about having generaly well developt cities with large pop, the same thing as having low C/P ratio.

Right but for any kind of tall play to exist, there should always be two optimal C/P points: one with a large number of small cities and another with a smaller number of tall cities. Those optimal points may change over the course of the game, making it strategically smart to expand at certain points depending on how tall you want your other cities to be (unlike BNW where one optimum was always fixed at 4-5 cities for the entire game). Here though it seems kind of like it will *always* be worth it to expand, since the gains from having a new city far outweigh the costs in health. Which means there is no attainable optimum...you should just keep building cities, always. Hello ICS.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Right but for any kind of tall play to exist, there should always be two optimal C/P points: one with a large number of small cities and another with a smaller number of tall cities. Those optimal points may change over the course of the game, making it strategically smart to expand at certain points depending on how tall you want your other cities to be (unlike BNW where one optimum was always fixed at 4-5 cities for the entire game). Here though it seems kind of like it will *always* be worth it to expand, since the gains from having a new city far outweigh the costs in health. Which means there is no attainable optimum...you should just keep building cities, always. Hello ICS.

Well not Quite ICS... if you aren't gaining any new territory, then it takes a while to pay back the cost of the Settler and its health buildings.

However, if you are getting some new territory with the colonist, then yes it is always worthwhile to expand.

 

[MadDjinn]

I think there's a problem in this disussion.

Constantly building out new cities is not ICS when you're spacing them out to be productive cities that claim lots of space. Eventually these cities will grow 'tall'. Or you can shortcut the building process and take enemy cities of value (burning the rest).

staying to 4-5 cities is not 'tall', but rather 'small'. High pop in those cities is fine, but it's not really about the population.

ICS should also gain no benefit over a well developed empire with less cities, but the same pop. No empire has really done much with mass spam of undeveloped cities.

What should exist is the constant need to expand, in one form or another, at least until some power level required to win the game - or prevent your opponents winning it first. It's not about 'must take over the whole world', but rather about not being a City State plus.

There does need to be limitations on expansion over the game, so that one doesn't just mass spam early. But the game should not block you from expanding at all, or provide mechanics (such as in BNW) to make expansion a 'bad thing' to do.

Granted, just because you plant a city, doesn't mean it needs to grow tall or build everything. some small cities tossed out there to gain the local resources should be viable, as long as they don't provide huge benefits for being there.

 

[a space oddity]

I agree, I always found the way CiV limits growth a bit unnatural. The size of a nation should be only limited by the natural limits of the available resources.

edit: Which doen't mean that size should not have a prize, but with careful planning growth should be possible at all times whenever there are some resources left.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I agree, I always found the way CiV limits growth a bit unnatural. The size of a nation should be only limited by the natural limits of the available resources.

edit: Which doen't mean that size should not have a prize, but with careful planning growth should be possible at all times whenever there are some resources left.

Well with that point I disagree.. the size of a nation should be limited by its ability to socially keep different people together.

Which is why I was hoping for a
0 city unhealth, but 0 health from buildings as well (instead you would have base health from difficulty, virtues and techs... buildings would decrease the unhealth/pop in that city)

Essentially you have a total empire Pop limit.. built up cities can use that pop limit more efficiently, and virtues/techs increase the total base pop.

 

[a space oddity]

Well with that point I disagree.. the size of a nation should be limited by its ability to socially keep different people together.

In that case social (un)rest should be part in the game, since essentially this is a game of numbers. I think they left the policy notion out of this game for a reason. This game is more about how to deal with an alien planet.

Which is why I was hoping for a
0 city unhealth, but 0 health from buildings as well (instead you would have base health from difficulty, virtues and techs... buildings would decrease the unhealth/pop in that city)

Essentially you have a total empire Pop limit.. built up cities can use that pop limit more efficiently, and virtues/techs increase the total base pop.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, you would like a fixed planetary pop limit? It is there I'm sure, a planet has only so many workable tiles. You could compute what the optimal number of cities would be, but I'm not sure why that would be interesting. Or doe you mean a fixed faction pop limit? That would be odd IMHO.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

In that case social (un)rest should be part in the game, since essentially this is a game of numbers. I think they left the policy notion out of this game for a reason. This game is more about how to deal with an alien planet.



I'm not sure what you're saying here, you would like a fixed planetary pop limit? It is there I'm sure, a planet has only so many workable tiles. You could compute what the optimal number of cities would be, but I'm not sure why that would be interesting. Or doe you mean a fixed faction pop limit? That would be odd IMHO.

Not a Planetary pop limit, a Player pop limit (although soft like BEs current situation.. and rebels should be the eventual result of going too negative)

The pop limit would increase through virtues and techs (founding more cities doesn't increase the pop limit)

But a city could build buildings so that its pop counted less against the limit... ie a 20 pop city with the right buildings causes as much unhealthy as a 5 pop city with no buildings (not because it has +15 health from buildings, but because the buildings allow it to get 4 pop for each unhealth)

 

[Matthew.]

I think tall in a sense of "I'll get X cities and then stop expanding" is.. overall just bad design.

No empire has really done much with mass spam of undeveloped cities...

...What should exist is the constant need to expand, in one form or another, at least until some power level required to win the game - or prevent your opponents winning it first. It's not about 'must take over the whole world', but rather about not being a City State plus.

Well said both of you. When I promote eXpand in 4X, it isn't to imply full on map clear warmonger domination, but rather the need to grow to support bigger projects, higher tech, etc.

I have no problems with tailored victories, wonders, or tech for small/tall play, but I do think there should be a definite correlation between power and resources/population. I also think that if we accept that small/tall play should be viable, it should also include game systems which require the player to use such things like trade or diplomacy to remain competitive. You shouldn't be able to just queue up a set of improvements and click next turn to victory pass empires with massive amounts of land, resources, and population.

 

[Acken]

I agree with people saying that staying on 4-5 for the whole game isn't good. The problem I have is that people then describe tall not as small but as: slow expanding but with very tall cities. I do not see what kind of bonuses you're going to take in civbe to make it viable. That is, bonuses that make these few cities grow a lot taller than someone expanding a lot more faster and taking the same bonuses to growth. In a nutshell, I feel trying to achieve the fastest expansion (when available, due to aliens and other civs) is just a nobrainer (up to a limit).

I guess at this point things will be answered the 24th