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

[drachasor]

It makes a bit of sense. If you take a small fishing village, build a library and put some locals to work in it, it's not likely to discover nuclear fusion or produce the next Albert Einstein. The intellectuals flock to the big universities in the big cities.

Yeah, but it also means that if you have 15 large cities with lots of science buildings, then they don't do science as well as 6 large cities with lots of science. It will be yet another incentive to burn down any enemy city you take.

When there are better ways to fix the core problem without introducing unintended side effects, I'd say you go with those rather than a quick and messy "fix."

 

[pi-r8]

That's an overly harsh criticism of the game. In reality the disparity between tons of trash cities and a few really good cities is not as large.

For one, these small cities take forever to build the higher tier improvements, and such improvements cost a lot in maintenance and do not give as much of a return. Public schools, research labs, stock exchanges, factories, hydro plants, these things take forever to build and are not worth it when you've got a million size 6 cities. But the % returns from these buildings are very significant when you've got large cities.

The thing is, with less cities, you can rush buy these late buildings and get immediate, large benefits. You'd never afford this with many small cities and the payoffs would be much less. You also get more specialist slots and more benefit out of assigning these specialists because of the % boosts and the better SPs.

I've gotten similar returns to the posted ICS from my very non-powergamed/non-refined French culture victory game with about 7 supercities with river/hill tiles, river jungles etc., rationalism and commerce and all that good SP stuff. Not quite as good as ICS, but not a fraction of the effectiveness either. The balance is not way off, but it is off. It's fixable.

None of those late game improvements really give much bang for the buck, though. For one thing, they come very late in the game, when you can just finish one of the winning conditions instead. They also only boost the base yield, so if you have a size 20 city working entirely riverside trading posts (to pick a ridiculous example) the stock exchange is still only worth 20 gold/turn. if you want to rush buy that stock exchange, it will take about 40 turns for it to show a profit, and by then the game is over.

public schools and research labs are a joke. Their combined cost is 950 hammers, to get just 2 scientist slots. For 950 hammers you could build at least 5 settlers and 5 libraries, to get 10 new scientist slots. Then once those cities have grown to size 3 or 4 they'll easily outmatch the regular beakers you gain from the % gain.

 

[Lightzy]

It's the same mechanic that is already used in social policies. Penalty in social policies isn't enough, but increase base tech cost by 30% from every new city, and maybe the ICS doesn't look so tempting anymore.

If you meant it's utterly unrealistic then you are probably right. But I guess game play > realism. It isn't very realistic in SPs either.

Sorry mate but that's an unoptimal solution.

Bigger = better, and that's how it SHOULD be. It just shouldn't be so easy to be bigger.

A much better solution is to simply make city states give 15% to total food grown in each city (rounded down), so that the cities will have to produce something to begin with.
Same for culture. maybe +15% rounded down for culture points in each city.

That way bigger is better, yes, but you actually need to have a good culture producing city or 2 for the bonus to be worthwhile.
Also, you get no "magic" free food, just a bonus to your own production, so ICS is impossible to benefit from really and you need to plant your cities smartly in good terrain.


This also makes sure that CSs only really kick in for your large core cities and not sprawls.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

It's the same mechanic that is already used in social policies. Penalty in social policies isn't enough, but increase base tech cost by 30% from every new city, and maybe the ICS doesn't look so tempting anymore.

If you meant it's utterly unrealistic then you are probably right. But I guess game play > realism. It isn't very realistic in SPs either.

The difference is that with social policies, the bonus comes into effect immediately after you select a policy (you don't need to build any buildings to see it's effects). While technology usually unlocks new buildings and units you can build. So the technology makes a difference in the cities you build it's buildings in.

The rational behind "more cities means more culture to unlock the next policy" reflects that it's easier and quicker for a small civ to institute changes. But, in a way, tech already is more expensive for a larger civ, because you have to build more buildings (since you have more cities) that the tech unlocked in more cities.

In Europa Universalis, tech gets more expensive when you gain more provinces; but most techs in Europa Universalis result in increased efficieny, which (like social policies in CiV) don't require contructing a building to unlock it's effects.

Having said is, I still think that slightly higher tech for more cities might be a good idea. Historically, many smaller countries (like The Netherlands, Venice, ect.) were advance in tech and had great economies. Big countries like Russia and Poland/Lithuainia were not as advanced. And, for gameplay purposes, a large nation with lots of units fighting a smaller nation with advanced units makes for better balance. It could help solve the AI vs AI conquest which results in half of the starting AI civs being destroyed (or down to one or two cities) by mid-game.

 

[MkLh]

Sorry mate but that's an AWFUL solution.

Bigger = better, and that's how it SHOULD be. It just shouldn't be so easy to be bigger.

In game play wise, it's basically the same mechanics as in Civ4. In Civ4, a new city almost always hurt your research, but once it develops, it starts to improve your science. It would work the same way here: a city can eventually produce enough science to match the increased tech costs.

The only major difference is the realism aspect - it makes (at least some) sense than your civilization can't invest that much in science after it gets a new city to maintain, but it makes very little sense that learning a same tech is more difficult for a big than for a small civilization. However, if you're able to ignore realism, I can't see why it wouldn't be a potential solution. Certainly the ICS issue can be solved, it's another matter if there is will to do it.

A much better solution is to simply make city states give 15% to total food grown in each city (rounded down), so that the cities will have to produce something to begin with.
Same for culture. maybe +15% rounded down for culture points in each city.

This would be some kind of balancing, but like mentioned, you can do ICS even without city states.

 

[Thormodr]

The difference is that with social policies, the bonus comes into effect immediately after you select a policy (you don't need to build any buildings to see it's effects). While technology usually unlocks new buildings and units you can build. So the technology makes a difference in the cities you build it's buildings in.

The rational behind "more cities means more culture to unlock the next policy" reflects that it's easier and quicker for a small civ to institute changes. But, in a way, tech already is more expensive for a larger civ, because you have to build more buildings (since you have more cities) that the tech unlocked in more cities.

In Europa Universalis, tech gets more expensive when you gain more provinces; but most techs in Europa Universalis result in increased efficieny, which (like social policies in CiV) don't require contructing a building to unlock it's effects.

Having said is, I still think that slightly higher tech for more cities might be a good idea. Historically, many smaller countries (like The Netherlands, Venice, ect.) were advance in tech and had great economies. Big countries like Russia and Poland/Lithuainia were not as advanced. And, for gameplay purposes, a large nation with lots of units fighting a smaller nation with advanced units makes for better balance. It could help solve the AI vs AI conquest which results in half of the starting AI civs being destroyed (or down to one or two cities) by mid-game.

Good points. I like the Europa Universalis system. You can have some pretty powerful small trading nations that hire mercenaries when necessary to fight their wars. Bigger is not necessarily better in EU3. You can get racked with revolts when you get too big and literally get torn apart. You have to be really careful when you are annexing provinces with different cultures and religions.

Not so in ciV. Cities don't revolt anymore, unfortunately.

 

[Frosty_AUT]

Having said is, I still think that slightly higher tech for more cities might be a good idea. Historically, many smaller countries (like The Netherlands, Venice, ect.) were advance in tech and had great economies. Big countries like Russia and Poland/Lithuainia were not as advanced. And, for gameplay purposes, a large nation with lots of units fighting a smaller nation with advanced units makes for better balance. It could help solve the AI vs AI conquest which results in half of the starting AI civs being destroyed (or down to one or two cities) by mid-game.

Meh, I don't think you should be penalized scientifically for having a large empire. I think the way it should be is that techs get cheaper the more civilizations already have them. I think this would be a pretty realistic way of representing how innovation prompts imitation. If one country discovers a technology/concept that leads to major changes in science, culture, society, economy or warfare (especially warfare!), I'd expect said technology/concept to spread around the globe pretty soon.

 

[the streak]

None of those late game improvements really give much bang for the buck, though. For one thing, they come very late in the game, when you can just finish one of the winning conditions instead. They also only boost the base yield, so if you have a size 20 city working entirely riverside trading posts (to pick a ridiculous example) the stock exchange is still only worth 20 gold/turn. if you want to rush buy that stock exchange, it will take about 40 turns for it to show a profit, and by then the game is over.

public schools and research labs are a joke. Their combined cost is 950 hammers, to get just 2 scientist slots. For 950 hammers you could build at least 5 settlers and 5 libraries, to get 10 new scientist slots. Then once those cities have grown to size 3 or 4 they'll easily outmatch the regular beakers you gain from the % gain.

Well, communism comes fairly late in the game too, a bit later than factories and that's not taking into account that you have to actually expand like a madman after you acquire communism, which takes tons more turns as well.

The gold buildings are a matter of math, taking into account big ben and the commerce SPs which you'll most likely have. Not always worth rushing, since you're trading immediate coin for coin over time.

The sciences buildings are definitely no joke. The accumulation of large pop + extra scientist specialists + extra beakers from trading posts and specialists (due to rationalism) adds up a ton considering you've probably spammed TPs, and all the beaker bonuses get multiplied through all the %boosts.

Using the exaggerated example of 20 TPs, that's 20 beakers just due to rationalism. Library gets +1 beaker for every 2 dudes, so you'll need to build your 5 settlers, build 5 cities and get them to 8 pop to equal the megacity's TPs. 5 libraries = 10 specialists = 30 beakers, but megacity with rationalism + research lab gets: 20 beakers (from TP) + 5 (from specialist in lab) + 75 (100% boost of everything in the city) = 100... hope I did that right. That's due to rationalism and research lab alone.

Nevermind the university and public school and the extra beakers they pile up on top of everything. Each scientist is worth 15 beakers under rationalism + all bldgs, versus 3 beakers using just mass libraries.

Yes, research lab and hydro plant are quite late, but assuming you enter modern age by beelining to plastics (which is the best non-military entry in modern age), you can get them reasonably fast relative to the end of the game.

Yes, this all depends on the right SPs, but that's the benefit of going with a small number of cities vs. ICS. This all requires very good circumstances for the megacity civ, but you can see how under ideal conditions the ICS isn't too far ahead in research. Similar arguments can be made for production and gold.

 

[Jiago]

And, for gameplay purposes, a large nation with lots of units fighting a smaller nation with advanced units makes for better balance.

Two major faults i can see in V are science directly tied to raw population number (pure non-sense) and the lack of a concept like city maintenance.

The big deal (ok, not so big when you learned the basics but still something to keep in mind) in IV is that if you want to expand a lot there's a big price to pay, the risk to heavily decrease your science rate. Now there's no payoff and ICS rules.

Then of course comes suboptimal design with things like libraries giving more scientists than universities, public schools and even research labs...

 

[pi-r8]

Well, communism comes fairly late in the game too, a bit later than factories and that's not taking into account that you have to actually expand like a madman after you acquire communism, which takes tons more turns as well.

The gold buildings are a matter of math, taking into account big ben and the commerce SPs which you'll most likely have. Not always worth rushing, since you're trading immediate coin for coin over time.

The sciences buildings are definitely no joke. The accumulation of large pop + extra scientist specialists + extra beakers from trading posts and specialists (due to rationalism) adds up a ton considering you've probably spammed TPs, and all the beaker bonuses get multiplied through all the %boosts.

Using the exaggerated example of 20 TPs, that's 20 beakers just due to rationalism. Library gets +1 beaker for every 2 dudes, so you'll need to build your 5 settlers, build 5 cities and get them to 8 pop to equal the megacity's TPs. 5 libraries = 10 specialists = 30 beakers, but megacity with rationalism + research lab gets: 20 beakers (from TP) + 5 (from specialist in lab) + 75 (100% boost of everything in the city) = 100... hope I did that right. That's due to rationalism and research lab alone.

Nevermind the university and public school and the extra beakers they pile up on top of everything. Each scientist is worth 15 beakers under rationalism + all bldgs, versus 3 beakers using just mass libraries.

Yes, research lab and hydro plant are quite late, but assuming you enter modern age by beelining to plastics (which is the best non-military entry in modern age), you can get them reasonably fast relative to the end of the game.

Yes, this all depends on the right SPs, but that's the benefit of going with a small number of cities vs. ICS. This all requires very good circumstances for the megacity civ, but you can see how under ideal conditions the ICS isn't too far ahead in research. Similar arguments can be made for production and gold.

5 cities with 6 pop and 2 scientists each is 15 research each, for a total of 75 research.

A size 20 city that adds a research lab, with 15 trading posts and 5 scientists (you double counted 5 people) would get an extra 20 (pop) + 15 (trading posts) + 20 (bonus to existing scientists) + 10 (new scientist) = 65 research.

And this is basically the best research city you can possibly have, and you have to rush buy the research lab there.

 

[Lightzy]

research is more dependent on research buildings than on pop.
A small civ that's more focused on research should out-tech a larger one that is busy warring or whatever producing wonders and so on because it'll have the right buildings sooner.

of course with ICS everything is thrown out the window because nothing can beat that as it stands

 

[the streak]

Let's just do the overall total beakers.

Megacity:
20 (pop)
15 (TPs)
10 (library +1/2pop)
25 (5 scientists * 5 beakers/scientist with the rationalism SP)
---
total base = 70
---
modifiers:
50% uni + 50% school + 100% lab = +200%
---
grand total = 210 beakers from 1 city

This is compared to 75 research from 5 small cities. You need 14 cities to match that one megacity. 14*6 pop = 84 pop, compared to my 20 pop, so you have bigger happiness issues.

A much more reasonable rate, which you can do with all your cities before you reach communism and saturation with mini-cities, assuming appropriate pre-planning with SPs, is:

15 pop, 10 on TPs and 5 on specialists, with library/uni/school = 105 beakers per city. You need 7 cities for each one of these. That's just not a reasonable number of cities to settle on good terrain, which means you're going to have to get into some pretty ugly terrain which won't give you as good of a gold income. Assuming of course that you can get a lot of size-6 cities, and I see by your ICS thread in the strat forum that you don't get.

ICS basically gives you a big production advantage, which is good for mass-producing units, and nothing else (since you need many more hammers to build multiple copies of each building in each mini-city). I'd argue that gold is also very close, just by comparing gold income I've seen in my games to that shown on screenshots by people using ICS.

 

[muxec]

Possible sub-solutions to ICS:

1. Faster growth of large cities.
2. Improve resource tiles.
3. Make all social policies highly useful, at least under some circumstances.
4. National wonders and other non-spammable sources of happiness. Less spammable happiness buildings, at least in early eras. Unhappiness should affect research and money.
5. Percentage bonuses to production/econ in very large cities.
6. Make production/economical national wonders much stronger.
7. More specialist slots.
8. Make bottom and top parts of tech tree more inter-connected, removing fast industrial age slingshot.

With more happiness coming from non spammable source and faster growth of large cities you can actually choose whether to put the limited happiness into large cities or small ones. With large cities having some real advantages smaller cities become less important.

 

[UncleJJ]

People should stop wasting their time trying to think of quick and easy fixes to this problem. It's not going to go away easily. Right now almost everything in the game rewards city spam, so you'd have to rebalance everything to fix it. I'm going to through all the ways, here.

To start, your economy is based on 3 things- gold, science, and production. All are better with ICS:

I'm very sceptical of this position. Please explain how you can ICS if the colosseum is fixed. There are several ways it could be altered and they'd all have devastating effects on small city ICS.

Here are two:
Option 1. Can only build a colosseum in a size 8 city.
Option 2. Colosseum gives 1 happiness for every 3 pop in that city.

How many cities and what sizes are you going to have with either of those two options?

 

[Eberon]

You have done it! You made me register for the forums, now we will see who is sorry!!! (me)

You guys really need to try ICS a few times before you tell all the people who have been testing it how much it sucks and cant work well compared to large city strategies. Its works brilliantly. The issue that seems to be that you think I must build ONLY small cities. ICS isnt just a strategy unto itself, its a component that is easily tacked on to almost any strategy and making it better. You think running 10 big well developed cities is better than running 40 small ICS cities? Try 10 big well developed cities AND 40 small ICS cities. Those 40 small cities are COMPLETELY self suficient. Of course its better to make a large awesome city. Sometimes you cant. Maybe you only have a small corner with a couple crummy tiles. Slap a ICS style in there and enjoy.

The 1 and ONLY way in which doing nothing is better than dropping a small ICS city down is the culture hit. I find being ahead in tech and having extra cash to be more useful than the lost SP. Maybe its just me

 

[Thormodr]

You have done it! You made me register for the forums, now we will see who is sorry!!! (me)

You guys really need to try ICS a few times before you tell all the people who have been testing it how much it sucks and cant work well compared to large city strategies. Its works brilliantly. The issue that seems to be that you think I must build ONLY small cities. ICS isnt just a strategy unto itself, its a component that is easily tacked on to almost any strategy and making it better. You think running 10 big well developed cities is better than running 40 small ICS cities? Try 10 big well developed cities AND 40 small ICS cities. Those 40 small cities are COMPLETELY self suficient. Of course its better to make a large awesome city. Sometimes you cant. Maybe you only have a small corner with a couple crummy tiles. Slap a ICS style in there and enjoy.

The 1 and ONLY way in which doing nothing is better than dropping a small ICS city down is the culture hit. I find being ahead in tech and having extra cash to be more useful than the lost SP. Maybe its just me

Welcome to the forums.

ICS Snowball Civing is indeed the best strategy.

 

[apotheoser]

I love how all the fanboys were talking how great the new happiness and civic mechanics were for discouraging infinite expansion, and then criticizing Civ5 players who were skeptical about the new systems.

It was pretty obvious from the first few hours of playing that Jon Shafer just doesn't have the design abilities of the previous Civ designers. Let him churn out the expansion packs after the real designers have made the game, thanks. 26 years old on his first real game release and you put Civ freaking 5 in his hands? Great job, Firaxis. Fire your executives already.

 

[Thormodr]

I love how all the fanboys were talking how great the new happiness and civic mechanics were for discouraging infinite expansion, and then criticizing Civ5 players who were skeptical about the new systems.

It was pretty obvious from the first few hours of playing that Jon Shafer just doesn't have the design abilities of the previous Civ designers. Let him churn out the expansion packs after the real designers have made the game, thanks. 26 years old on his first real game release and you put Civ freaking 5 in his hands? Great job, Firaxis. Fire your executives already.

Sid Meir, Brian Reynolds and Soren Johnson are all great game designers. They really "get" it. Years of experience will do that.

Jon Shafer didn't have enough experience and should have never been given the opportunity to make the game.

 

[lschnarch]

Jon Shafer didn't have enough experience and should have never been given the opportunity to make the game.

Actually, that is something which was confusing me from the very first moment on.

Ok, so Meier decided to give him a chance. Which is good, no doubt.

But then he just let him do his thing without some checking, without occasionally playing it by himself?
Am I wrong, or is "Civilization" the one really impressive success story of Firaxis?
What else would the have in their basket?

And then they allow this game to be released under the brand name of Civilization? I really don't get it.

 

[pi-r8]

Let's just do the overall total beakers.

Megacity:
20 (pop)
15 (TPs)
10 (library +1/2pop)
25 (5 scientists * 5 beakers/scientist with the rationalism SP)
---
total base = 70
---
modifiers:
50% uni + 50% school + 100% lab = +200%
---
grand total = 210 beakers from 1 city

This is compared to 75 research from 5 small cities. You need 14 cities to match that one megacity. 14*6 pop = 84 pop, compared to my 20 pop, so you have bigger happiness issues.

A much more reasonable rate, which you can do with all your cities before you reach communism and saturation with mini-cities, assuming appropriate pre-planning with SPs, is:

15 pop, 10 on TPs and 5 on specialists, with library/uni/school = 105 beakers per city. You need 7 cities for each one of these. That's just not a reasonable number of cities to settle on good terrain, which means you're going to have to get into some pretty ugly terrain which won't give you as good of a gold income. Assuming of course that you can get a lot of size-6 cities, and I see by your ICS thread in the strat forum that you don't get.

ICS basically gives you a big production advantage, which is good for mass-producing units, and nothing else (since you need many more hammers to build multiple copies of each building in each mini-city). I'd argue that gold is also very close, just by comparing gold income I've seen in my games to that shown on screenshots by people using ICS.

like Eberon said, the small cities don't prevent you from building a big research magacity if you so desire. It's just the fastest way to expand. You don't need communism to make it work, or anything really. You certainly don't need "good terrain". Even a snowy wasteland will work- settle it, run 2 scientists and a coloseum, and bam free science! And with small populations, the growth rate is extremely fast, so you end up with a lot more citizens compared to using big cities.

I'm very sceptical of this position. Please explain how you can ICS if the colosseum is fixed. There are several ways it could be altered and they'd all have devastating effects on small city ICS.

Here are two:
Option 1. Can only build a colosseum in a size 8 city.
Option 2. Colosseum gives 1 happiness for every 3 pop in that city.

How many cities and what sizes are you going to have with either of those two options?

You wouldn't be able to settle infinitely but you'd still want to settle as many as possible, until you run out of happiness. For example, if you can only build a colosseum in a size 8 city then I'll just make as many size 8 cities as possible, because each one is a bonus to everything except happiness.