Sullla Discovers the Major Fault Behind Civ V: The Death of Civ?

[Jediron]

Because JS is infatuated with Civ III. He admitted that it is his favourite version of Civ and his design choices clearly reflect that.

I guess he doesn't subscribe to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" theory.

If that is the case, he have made a poor job out of it; i loved CIV III, but hardly can say that now with V.

Anyway, builded another warrior to deal with the barbs. They are really becoming annoying...

The Germans are pretty close by and the japanese in the far south-west. Guess i know pretty sure which to take first

 

[drachasor]

The best way to combat ICS is to re-introduce (more or less) the Civ4 system. Cost of new cities with a cost increasing with distance to capital. Then lower cost of buildings (even making many or all zero) to compensate. Problem (re-)solved.

You don't even need cost increasing with distance (I think that makes colonies and such overly bad -- they are punished enough by the physical distance and the military logistics that implies). A sufficient base maintenance based on number of cities alone should be more than sufficient.

 

[Earthling]

Guys tell me something but be honest about it.I have few suspicions about why the game feels like a shuffled puzzle atm.I have posted some thought on page 6 if you are up for reading but to be brief tell me if my logic holds true :

Firaxis sat on the table and said :

1) we need to fix SOD
- we make 1UPT
- we make them build slower
- we make special tiles provide less to avoid runaway economy later on

2) we need to fix the pleatora of softcaps (religion health and happyness)
- we make global happiness
- we make the cost of happiness steep enough to avoid massive city empires which can lead to 1)

3) we need to solve the road spagetti
- make each road tile cost gold
- make each railroad cost even more gold

Answers are pretty easy to these actually, if depressing

1) was a horrible idea for a fix from the onset. Fixing the SoD, yes, was a good idea, but it did NOT REQUIRE 1UPT. The answer would have been fine if we still kept actual stacks, yes unlimited: fix ranged attacks and siege (note, broken just as bad or worse, siege/ranged attacking wasn't fixed at all...) keep the holistic, empire-wide warfare from previous civs, and then fix unit costs, unit upkeep and supply, etc...

Civ is not and was not meant to be a wargame - trying to make it a 1-unit-per-hex wargame also wrecked the AI (called it) and didn't even solve the problem of unit spamming or having to spend so much of gameplay time warring.

2) was not broken and shouldn't have been tried be fixed at all. Soft caps were not really a problem - so I would say the decision from the start to try to "fix" this was silly, it was meant for "new players" to "reduce micromanagement" and again doesn't really do that either, tile micromanagement and so on is still obviously around.

3) was a very minor problem and the solution was not the right solution, again. We still have logical flaws like roads not working for both sides of a war - that right there was already enough of a fix to remove roadspam using the Civ4 engine itself, because that specifically was done in mods, and worked. Related things like unit promotions were also terribly implemented in civ5 - the promotion system is worse than civ4, compounding symptoms like this one.

If that is the case, he have made a poor job out of it; i loved CIV III, but hardly can say that now with V.

I have to agree with this in the sense that while JS might have had many problems in really continuing the spirit of the civ series - this isn't an accurate description. Honestly I can't understand at ALL, how anyone, anywhere, thinks civ5 is closer to civ3. Except for certain AI quirks or exploits in their attitudes/diplomacy system (which are similar to civ3 in some ways, civ4 being the exception there) pretty much every other thing about civ5 differs from civ3 incredibly. On scale/historical feel and immersion it's really more like 3, 4, 5 in order of how they are related; in other factors civ5 is very close to civ4 (tiles, resources, improvements) and in some ways more simplified/like CivRev in how it treats victories/player interaction.

 

[drachasor]

Answers are pretty easy to these actually, if depressing

1) was a horrible idea for a fix from the onset. Fixing the SoD, yes, was a good idea, but it did NOT REQUIRE 1UPT. The answer would have been fine if we still kept actual stacks, yes unlimited: fix ranged attacks and siege (note, broken just as bad or worse, siege/ranged attacking wasn't fixed at all...) keep the holistic, empire-wide warfare from previous civs, and then fix unit costs, unit upkeep and supply, etc...

Civ is not and was not meant to be a wargame - trying to make it a 1-unit-per-hex wargame also wrecked the AI (called it) and didn't even solve the problem of unit spamming or having to spend so much of gameplay time warring.

2) was not broken and shouldn't have been tried be fixed at all. Soft caps were not really a problem - so I would say the decision from the start to try to "fix" this was silly, it was meant for "new players" to "reduce micromanagement" and again doesn't really do that either, tile micromanagement and so on is still obviously around.

3) was a very minor problem and the solution was not the right solution, again. We still have logical flaws like roads not working for both sides of a war - that right there was already enough of a fix to remove roadspam using the Civ4 engine itself, because that specifically was done in mods, and worked. Related things like unit promotions were also terribly implemented in civ5 - the promotion system is worse than civ4, compounding symptoms like this one.

1) I think they should have gone with CTP2 armies. 12 or so units per tile, and all units in a tile can be grouped into an army that fights together. At some point have siege able to shoot 2 squares to provide additional depth and support since that makes sense. Combined arms matter in a CTP2-like system as well.

2) Agreed, not a problem.

3) All roads costing money is kind of crazy. At the very least you should be getting a certain number of maintenance-free roads based on number of cities and city-size. It should provide enough for connecting cities and connecting to strategically important positions without costing so much. That encourages sensible use of roads, isn't punishing, and discourages absolute spam.

 

[the343danny]

Economy and Balance Mods go long ways towards fixing a lot of the issues. Simple things as increased research costs and buffed improvements go long ways towards making a better game. IMO for the game to surpass Civ 4 vanilla, all it needs is a bit better AI. I say a bit because Civ 4 AI wasnt particularly impressive either. Fixing city locations and closeness to the AIs borders really need to be tweaked, and AI needs a better threat detection, and a system that would better tell the AI when to fight or not. Those are all relatively small tweaks that can seriously improve the game, and every single thread I see puts these off as game breaking issue that makes CiV so terribly bad.

 

[vendur]

We really need 12390423704036492307649237460623 pages and posts talking about stuff thats been talked about for weeks in the strategy forum?

Moderator Action: Please discuss the topic at hand.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Lightzy]

1) Increasing food yield will still leave large cities very hard to make. The problem is they grow way too slowly and there's not much of an advantage to having one big city compared to 3 or so smaller ones (culture is just about the only thing).

2) Normal Empires can already have significant money issues. Now you've just bankrupted them and made non-river starts such a joke that no one should ever play a game without a river. Nerfing TPs is a gross overreaction. They aren't the problem. The problem is everything else. Something can look overpowered when the truth is everything else is just too weak.

3) You don't need Maritime to have ICS work. You only need size 4 cities. Even anything Maritime is a bit problematic in Sulla's game because it made his cities grow too much (giving him extra problems with happiness). This makes the initial period a little slow for a new city (you use farms to get to size 4, and it makes really bad areas like ice and resourceless tundra not worth it..probably). Maybe toss in a Granary. Besides a small delay for new cities getting up to snuff, it doesn't change anything.

I don't think these fixes would work well together either. Now you have big cities that can make stuff reasonably (assuming we are doubling hammers here), but you have far, far less gold to support more buildings OR more military units. How does that help anything? That would tend to encourage ICS anyhow (with more hammers meaning a small city doesn't need communism, necessarily).

With any of these things, you need to consider why building more cities is bad. In Civ 3 it was corruption (which was insane and awful). In Civ IV it was city maintenance, something a small city couldn't avoid. In Civ 2, of course, there was nothing, despite bigger cities having more production and being able to produce more -- kind of like what you are proposing here.

Personally you need some sort of cost for each city. Happiness isn't a very good way to go, imho, because while it might work, it doesn't make much sense at all (and it would probably hurt more reasonable empires). Some fixes probably need to be done with happiness though (I could see putting a pop requirement on Theatres and Stadiums, then making them MORE efficient than Coliseums).

So what else do you have? Culture? Already being tried and it doesn't work. What you have left is science and money, pretty much. Well, I don't think a science hit is going to do much, personally (worst case you fix it with some big cities or again it becomes an extremely artificial mechanic). Money seems like the best bet. City Maintenance made sense in 4, didn't feel like an artificial mechanic designed to punish you, and it worked at stopping ICS. Naturally building maintenance would have to pretty much disappear, but again that also is anti-ICS since it means big cities don't have crazy costs that they have to pay compared to small cities.

Of course, other stuff needs to be be adjusted to fix the other problems Sulla's game revealed (such as terrain not mattering, etc). I can't think of a better and more fun mechanic to help fix ICS than city maintenance, however.

I'm way thankful there is at least someone on the forums other than me considering fixes to problems rather than ranting about them pointlessly

First of all, I play with mods that do all the stuff I've written except changing the CSs (which I think would be brilliant but I don't know how to make), in addition to a mod that slows research to 75%, and you are indeed correct in that money is harder to get now.
But this I consider mostly good. It is a matter of balance then. You can raise overall money generation by a little bit to trade off for the loss from OP trade posts, and of course this indeed makes rivers more important.
But then rivers were monsterously imortant in civ4 too. financial+grass/flood river cottage? better than almost any tile.


I'm just waiting for someone to teach me how to make a mod that makes cultural/maritime CSs give percentage bonuses per city. Then we could test the whole thing and see for ourselves without guessing too much right?


Personally I disagree with the idea of removing building upkeep because this is another strategic layer of complexity that exists and I belive to be well implemented as it is. forces you to specialize your cities more.

What do you think?

 

[stii]

I don't... um...

What are you looking for, exactly? It is trivial to show that cramming together mostly small cities is the most efficient way to generate large amounts of gold and science. It can be shown through a simple chain of deductive reasoning. Where is the disconnect?

Ok as it is so trivial show it then. The game shown didn't win super early so why is this method better than any other way of building cities?

 

[snoochems]

excuse my ignorance, but what exactly was wrong with road spaghetti? Besides the looks?

 

[drachasor]

<snipped a bunch of stuff not because it was bad, but just to make the post smaller>

Personally I disagree with the idea of removing building upkeep because this is another strategic layer of complexity that exists and I belive to be well implemented as it is. forces you to specialize your cities more.

What do you think?

I think most maintenance needs to go away. Have buildings use strategic resources more often, and double or triple the number of buildings. That makes it so that you always have something to build and specialization happens because you literally can't build everything, but you can build the things you need for a given purpose -- and it hurts ICS a bit because if the buildings use resources and are really good, then building a bunch of small cities sucks more. I think the game needs more buildings like the Mint, which increase the value of resources or other tiles. It doesn't need any buildings like the Monastery or Circus, which requires a resource but doesn't require that you work it -- that makes the resource great for overlap between cities (3 cities near the same horse can each build a circus for happiness).

I don't think Trade Posts are OP. The problem is everything else is far too weak, making money the preferred way to handle everything. Up the value of production, make city growth a lot easier so you can have big cities, improve the not TP improvements and add some more and you'll have a much better system. I think some of the things in Civ IV need to come back here. Workshops for instance let you adjust to a bad tile situation (where you needed a production city but had too few hills). The ability to adapt is really nice there. Perhaps similarly special resources should have multiple ways to cultivate them (or perhaps just enhancement buildings is the way to go there).

I do think something needs to be done about the military though. I think a lot of the production fixes will end up being weird with small militaries. I don't like the idea of going back to SOD, but a CTP2 system would be pretty awesome (units stack up to 12, can form armies that use combined arms and attack as one).

 

[JudgeDeath]

excuse my ignorance, but what exactly was wrong with road spaghetti? Besides the looks?

It wasn't historically immersive. I mean what real civilization would build spaghetti roads?

 

[katipunero]

Sullla's's depth of analysis and clarity of vision are rare. He has the ability to cut to the strategic heart of a game very quickly. I've been a follower (and lurker) of his (and others) feats at Realms Beyond for many years.

ditto.

 

[Buccaneer]

Fascinating thread. I think Sullla presents his arguments in a very clear and understandable manner, yet it comes down to one's own bias and interpretation.

In my opinion, some of the most significant flaws in Civ5 comes from Civ3's influence (not CivRev, as commonly perceived). There were many things wrong with Civ3 that Civ2 and Civ4 did not have and it appears that Civ3's ugly head had rose again.

I also get a kick out of the notion that a simply mod or two can "fix" the flaws. How quaint. Most of these "fix" are superficial and actually causes more harm because they are looked at from a player's point of view. To reduce the effect of a bonus for us will only hurt the AI even more. To increase the effect of a bonus will only make the gap between the player and the AI even wider. The changes have to come from the core, not only to acheive more of a balance, but to make the AI a worthy and sensible opponent on the higher levels.

 

[Bezurn]

...

I'm just waiting for someone to teach me how to make a mod that makes cultural/maritime CSs give percentage bonuses per city. Then we could test the whole thing and see for ourselves without guessing too much right?


Personally I disagree with the idea of removing building upkeep because this is another strategic layer of complexity that exists and I belive to be well implemented as it is. forces you to specialize your cities more.

What do you think?

I would really like to see this added to the game too. I think the best solution for Maritime city state abuse and city spam requires action on a few fronts.

First is to find a way to make Maritime city states provide cities with the Civ4 granary effect. Maybe not 50%, but somewhere between 10-20% of free food on growth would be reasonable I think.

Second is reducing the yields of free food for cities. For capitals it should go .5, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 per era. For other cities it should go .25, .5, .75, 1, 1.5, 2

And lastly, the most complex and most important, is to scale the benefits of both of those effects based on the (number of cities you have) divided by (total world land area available on the map). Therefore the more cities you have on the map compared to what the land calls for a 'normal' sized empire to have would scale better to give smaller civilizations almost as much benefit from using city states.

IMO maritime city states should be better suited for use by smaller empires and cultural city states should be better suited for larger empires. I think cultural should give each city a small amount of culture, instead of a fixed amount per era. Also scale the cultural input to the cities use the same scaling equation used for maritime city yields so that smaller nations can get a decent benefit from them also.

 

[toft]

A global bonus based on the size of cities would encourage vertical growth, and in the really large 20+ cities, an extra citizen could mean something dramatical in your empire. If there were bonuses on EVERY output cities have (research, production, culture and citystate-bonus) then planning where to place a city would mean quite a lot. Borders would grow faster in big cities as it should in my opinion. Expanding your empire would be costly in terms of happiness - should I build a new city that gives me 1% bonus short term, or should I grow my existing cities larger? You will be rewarded on the long run in expanding, but it isn't a oneway highway to victory.

An example:
City-size 1 gets 1% bonus
City-size 2 gets 2.2% bonus
City-size 3 gets 3.4% bonus
City-size 4 gets 4.8% bonus
City-size 5 gets 6.6% bonus
City-size 6 gets 9,2% bonus
City-size 7 gets 13.4% bonus
City-size 8 gets 20.8% bonus
City-size 9 gets 34.6% bonus
City-size 10 gets 61.2% bonus

Maybe it has flaws as well, but I can't see them at the moment.

 

[da6d]

More cities means more $$$ and science. Likely you could buy all your units and have more advanced units and you'd be able to crush the AI likely anyway.

The AI would not stray away from ICS. It knows that it's its best option for winning. Its a no brainer and hence why the AI does it so well. (It doesn't have any brains. )

It would keep doing what works and ICS works.

The designers aren't about to do away with the core foundation of the AI.

Ok, I'll bite.

ICS may still be an optimal strategy for both the human and AI. But since currently a clever human can easily outmaneuver the AI and deflate a large empire, a better combat AI would be able to pose the same threat to a human.

Similarly, since larger borders are harder to defend for both AI and human, I still contend that having a serious military threat throughout the game would make runaway ICS much harder to execute, regardless of whether it remained a worthy strategy. For me this is an issue of balance. If ICS is a super-powerful method for victory, then difficulty defending a large empire is a way to balance this. I would add the AI needs to manage city-states better as well (but we know this).

I also have this creeping suspicion that many people (not necessarily you) are winning with the most exploitable methods available then declaring the game worthless. I could beat Civ IV on deity tiny duel map by axe rushing, doesn't mean I was an expert at deity (I suffered above monarch unless I was really focusing).

I agree the game is too easy/exploitable overall as it stands. I'm just trying to present a reasoned argument as to how some relatively minor changes to the AI might greatly alleviate some of these concerns.

Yes that means I'm in the cautiously optimistic camp - sue me

 

[Ayt]

If that is the case, he have made a poor job out of it; i loved CIV III, but hardly can say that now with V.

Anyway, builded another warrior to deal with the barbs. They are really becoming annoying...

The Germans are pretty close by and the japanese in the far south-west. Guess i know pretty sure which to take first

Use your horsies. Win the game.

 

[Thormodr]

Ok, I'll bite.

ICS may still be an optimal strategy for both the human and AI. But since currently a clever human can easily outmaneuver the AI and deflate a large empire, a better combat AI would be able to pose the same threat to a human.

Similarly, since larger borders are harder to defend for both AI and human, I still contend that having a serious military threat throughout the game would make runaway ICS much harder to execute, regardless of whether it remained a worthy strategy. For me this is an issue of balance. If ICS is a super-powerful method for victory, then difficulty defending a large empire is a way to balance this. I would add the AI needs to manage city-states better as well (but we know this).

I also have this creeping suspicion that many people (not necessarily you) are winning with the most exploitable methods available then declaring the game worthless. I could beat Civ IV on deity tiny duel map by axe rushing, doesn't mean I was an expert at deity (I suffered above monarch unless I was really focusing).

I agree the game is too easy/exploitable overall as it stands. I'm just trying to present a reasoned argument as to how some relatively minor changes to the AI might greatly alleviate some of these concerns.

Yes that means I'm in the cautiously optimistic camp - sue me

Certainly better combat AI is needed. I wouldn't expect any miracles in the next year or two though.

ICS likely won't get nerfed too much since it's integral to the computer remaining competitive.

It will likely become a little more challenging with better combat AI admittedly but I think it will still be the route to go. More science and more $$$ will mean you will have the tech advantage over the AI as well as the $$$ to buy and upgrade units.

JS needs to keep his precious little empires viable so don't expect much to change.

cIV was much, much better in that aspect with their maintenance system and barbs that actually posed a significant threat to you. That curbed ICS more than anything.

 

[drachasor]

I don't know why so many people are acting like the computer does ICS. It really doesn't. ICS is more compact than the AI and involves a lot more cities. If the AI did the same thing then you wouldn't see Sulla dominating against it using ICS.

 

[Lightzy]

I think most maintenance needs to go away. Have buildings use strategic resources more often, and double or triple the number of buildings. That makes it so that you always have something to build and specialization happens because you literally can't build everything, but you can build the things you need for a given purpose -- and it hurts ICS a bit because if the buildings use resources and are really good, then building a bunch of small cities sucks more. I think the game needs more buildings like the Mint, which increase the value of resources or other tiles. It doesn't need any buildings like the Monastery or Circus, which requires a resource but doesn't require that you work it -- that makes the resource great for overlap between cities (3 cities near the same horse can each build a circus for happiness).

I don't think Trade Posts are OP. The problem is everything else is far too weak, making money the preferred way to handle everything. Up the value of production, make city growth a lot easier so you can have big cities, improve the not TP improvements and add some more and you'll have a much better system. I think some of the things in Civ IV need to come back here. Workshops for instance let you adjust to a bad tile situation (where you needed a production city but had too few hills). The ability to adapt is really nice there. Perhaps similarly special resources should have multiple ways to cultivate them (or perhaps just enhancement buildings is the way to go there).

I do think something needs to be done about the military though. I think a lot of the production fixes will end up being weird with small militaries. I don't like the idea of going back to SOD, but a CTP2 system would be pretty awesome (units stack up to 12, can form armies that use combined arms and attack as one).

I definitely agree with you that buildings need to use resources more, that's a very clever idea.

I don't think this necessitates the elimination of per-building monetary upkeep.
As I said before, it's a strategic decision.

I think good retrofitting needs to tie every feature with other features more favorably to produce a rich matrix of possible strategies, none 'perfect' and all tailored specifically to a situation.. removing a game system outright I don't see as a good solution simply because it detracts from the possibilities.
Back when I was modding for fallout3 (made a few mods, including "Welcome To The Wasteland") this was my working philosophy when other modders just wanted to cancel out everything and make it like fallout2.

For example, what if I want to run a negative economy just to get the benefit of certain buildings for a set amount of turns until I sell them? Or more simply, because I anticipate large economic growth as part of my strategy?
Ideally you should always have a choice that is good situationally but can backfire


Regarding military/production:
Tried playing with the mods that increase strategic/food/mine yields?
I think you'll find the experience much improved. And also much more akin to civ4.
Also, the AI seems to react very favorably to these changes.