Let's assume that each city can potentially work up to 15 villages for science.
As an example, a tall empire with three cities of 40, 30, 30 would have 100 base science from pop. With the new mechanism, that would be more than halved, down to 45 science.
The wide empire with a capital of 20 and 8 cities of 10 would still be able to work 95 villages, extracting almost the same amount of science as before the change (a small 5% reduction).
I realize now my earlier suggestion might have been confusing, since I did not list all sources of science, only the ones which changed. The most important part to add to this analysis is science buildings. They're mostly based on population, and cities of those sizes would likely have at least a Library and University.
The general concept is to shift some science from the undeveloped & passive population boost, to more active decisions favoring developed cities (libraries, scientists, villages, etc). Does anyone have ideas for ways we could accomplish this?
The last two games I've played were both OCC
I would conclude that there's too much of everything - and not isolate on gold. And there has been a creeping inflation of benefits, especially the combined effects of some GW's and SP's.
I base most of my work around average circumstances. One-city-challenge games are somewhat unusual so I haven't focused much on them - yet. Do you have any ideas for how to specifically balance that one type of game, without significantly affecting other types of games? Txurce pointed out a year ago the "capital and satellites" theme is ingrained very deeply in Civ 5 by Firaxis, so an OOC game is inherently powerful.
In average games I do not feel benefits are rising. Just a few versions ago people were complaining Culture victories were
too slow, because we couldn't finish them until the modern era.
Tech costs are also higher than vanilla. When vanilla first released people were immediately beating it on Deity by turn 200. Vanilla adopted a lot of ideas from Vem so the gap is closer now, but I suspect Vem is still slower than vanilla.
The simplest approach if the game is too easy is to go up a difficulty level. With that option available, adjusting everything else might not be a good use of time. We naturally get better at the game as we play it, so it becomes easier no matter what changes are made.
Basically since we all know that we sell luxuries and would never buy them clearly the price is too high.
This depends on playstyle: conquest players like myself often struggle for happiness and buy luxuries. I've given strategic advice several times to people trying to figure out how to manage happiness in warmonger games (the key: use avoid growth!).
Garden gives +1
and a GPP boost (+100%??? Holy crap!).
Everything's in context:
vanilla
3
base +25% garden =
4
vem
2
base +100% garden =
4
Vem has a lower base rate to counter the higher availability of specialist slots in the early game. The garden counteracts this in midgame so overall great person rate can be the same. It also makes the garden a more desirable building, while in vanilla it's mostly useless.
For me, giving Science to Villages would alter the gameplay too much.
Consider that policies give Science to Villages, and cottages in Civ 4 gave both gold and science. Even so, shifting science to villages is not a very important point for me, just another idea to think about.
A prime example is the +1
for nearly every GW. You already get a great benefit from the GW; there's no reason to make it overly awesome.
It's a 3rd tier policy in the Tradition tree and replaces vanilla's happiness policy. The vanilla version was a passive bonus favoring undeveloped cities. The wonder bonus rewards actively building things in developed cities. It affects both national
and world wonders. The policy's strength depends on difficulty level. On the hardest three difficulties world wonders are increasingly challenging to get, so the bonus mainly turns to the national wonder side of things.
