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

[Horizons]

Tried it out, and until they fix the core gameplay mechanics, I think Civ V is toast. If they fix the core gameplay mechanics, after wading through all the other bugs and finish coding basic features they stopped doing at the halfway point.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/liberteordre.html

Ouch ...

 

[Leif Roar]

And yeah of course Sulla exploited imbalances here :
- sea city imbalance
- ICS imbalance
- AI bugs
- social policies imbalances

So, to put it harshly, to avoid "exploiting imbalances" one should ignore city states, stop expanding after after the classical age, not war against the AI, not trade with the AI and refrain from ever choosing any social policies?

There's not much left, is there?

 

[lschnarch]

That's not the point of nerfing maritime states I'm afraid. Of course maritime states should still be considered a good investment on par with other options if situation is right. It simply needs to be adjusted so that it won't benefit large empire so much more than small empires to offset ICS dominence. It already tries to do so by giving the capital twice more food than other cities and can see ICS isn't really intended by the designers or a result of a broken concept that can't be fixed by nature.

And there we are.
I don't think that "nerfing" maritime City States AND keeping them on par will be an easy job. Most probably you just cannot only nerf the maritime ones, but will have to touch the others too for the sake of keeping them at the same level.

I will gladly admit not having the solution, but I think people saying "Oh well, let's just nerf them!" are not seeing all the interactions and final results (which I don't see either at the moment, therefore I don't have a solution).

 

[pi-r8]

Do it without any maritime's and try to simulate far more expensive happiness by building a bunch of useless buildings everywhere then.

I expect you'd still easily win with such a setup (after all it's almost impossible to lose right now). I'm curious to see if it's still really OP that way though.

If you had to make an extra happiness building in order to keep a size 4 city neutral, that would probably eat up all your excess gold/turn. (40 cities * 5gold/city = 200 gold/turn) So that's definitely a big nerf on this strategy. However you'd still be far in the lead on tech and production, so it's not a terrible problem. If you want to also remove communism then that eliminates most of the production edge but you're still number 1 in science, so all you need is 1 good city to build advanced units for a military win, or the wonders for diplo/science win.

 

[dorn]

And there we are.
I don't think that "nerfing" maritime City States AND keeping them on par will be an easy job.

No I think everyone agrees that fixing maritime city states at least is super easy. The disagreement is on whether or not that will be a big deterrent to ICS.

 

[fendrake]

i know this sounds naive, but this could have an easy solution:

make the colloseum produce happiness based on population, say +1 happiness per 3 population.

then it would have the same efficiency as it has now when a city reaches a population of 12, thus making it harder for ICS to maintain happiness (it could still be done, if there were enough horses and ivory for circuses), while at the same time providing a reward for growing a few ciies to a large size (thus providing an incentive for building farms instead of trading posts).

this is not meant as an excuse for all the flaws and issues with this game - they certainly need a lot of fixing as well...

I actually like that idea, as long as it gets capped at +4. Same for the rest of the happiness buildings, proportional up to a cap. It even makes sense logically, the big cities tending to have/attract better performing arts.

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

I wouldn't call it a software issue, rather a gameplay balance issue which is more in the field of statistics.

Well ... depends on the way it was done the design & implementation phase.
I mean - did they really try ( or even think ) to prevent an issue like this lack of balance between, let's say - exagerrating , 5 BIG, well-placed and managed cities and 25 mediocre, "auto-governed" cities ?

I'm not sure at all that this happen ... from the result. And this could lead to very difficult ways to fix it ( or at least alot of works from "statistical-guys" - QA designers more likely ).

To try to give a similar example from Civ 4 : Vanilla version also favor the strategy to try a ( too easy ) slingshot to Civil Service but, IMHO, the outcome wasn't so devastating ...

 

[pi-r8]

No I think everyone agrees that fixing maritime city states at least is super easy. The disagreement is on whether or not that will be a big deterrent to ICS.

yeah I think the maritime imbalance is worst at the beginning of the game, where allying with one maritime CS can double the growth of your capital, or triple it's production by allowing it to work all mines.

 

[dorn]

However you'd still be far in the lead on tech and production, so it's not a terrible problem.

Maybe you should explain this part better then. I don't see how you would be "far" in the lead on tech if your population growth was heavily nerfed and you couldn't afford to be pumping out scientists.

Frankly after such changes a small civ pumping great scientists should be pummeling your ICS in tech growth.

Is it because you're still getting a lot of great scientists with this strat?

 

[Nutteria]

The irony is the the AI have figured out the game as well no matter how dumb it is.You see it spamming Trading posts most of the time and expanding like a madman unless Ghandy. The V1.0 AI has allready evaluated the game it has to deal with and made the right choice from game one turn 1.We the players were seeing it as bug/stupidity but in the end we are doing the exact same thing when playing on Emp.+ difficulty.THe only difference between us and the AI is that we choose the right civics for one and are way better at warfare for another.

 

[Andoo]

And there we are.
I don't think that "nerfing" maritime City States AND keeping them on par will be an easy job. Most probably you just cannot only nerf the maritime ones, but will have to touch the others too for the sake of keeping them at the same level.

I will gladly admit not having the solution, but I think people saying "Oh well, let's just nerf them!" are not seeing all the interactions and final results (which I don't see either at the moment, therefore I don't have a solution).

Yes it will take time but I think it's definitely possible. As you said simply nerfing maritime states will ironically nerf production even more because those 0/3/0 hills become less useful. But ideas like providing food for the biggest 5 cities for example will only affect cities after the 5th, providing more controlled result.

 

[fendrake]

Other food for thought, just adding more unhappiness per city might be a good start for a fix. 3 or 4 unhappiness per city base, yet still allowing meritocracy and forbidden palace as is.

On maritime city states, I admit I have little experience with what happens when someone else tries to ally with the same city state. How does the influence rivalry work? They ally with whoever has the highest influence, presumably? So if AIs actually tried to compete with you for influence over the city states, that could help nerf maritime.

 

[ohioastronomy]

@Thormodr : there's nothing sad here except people like you whining and ranting in forums all day without understanding every strategy game needs PATCHES to be BALANCED.

And yeah of course Sulla exploited imbalances here :
- sea city imbalance
- ICS imbalance
- AI bugs
- social policies imbalances

All he did was exploiting version 1.0 weaknesses, which is ok to me since it makes patches easier for the devs.

Stop with the drama, just play the game or wait for the patches. Everything will be ok.

What is different from other games ? Nothing. You ALWAYS patch imbalances. Is it your first civ game ?

What makes Civ 5 different from Civ 4 ? Civ 4 version 1.0 was even easier and even less playable. The game was buggier, and the AI was more broken.

Or were you too young at that time ?

Properly balancing the changes becomes exponentially harder when there are too many issues to fix. If you cripple maritime city states and get draconian on too many cities it'll make huge/large maps wildernesses. If you slow tech down you run the risk of kneecapping one of the victory conditions. And since the diplomatic one is pathetic, and the cultural one is small-only (or painful if not-small)...that would make this game a military-only win game. Bad.

 

[afa2000]

The problem with it is that there is nothing in the game that makes ICS a bad idea.

Just one word: Revolutions. They should have learned with some of Civ IV great mods. Actually, they should have learned with real life history.

 

[hogi]

No I think everyone agrees that fixing maritime city states at least is super easy. The disagreement is on whether or not that will be a big deterrent to ICS.

not only that, maritime food is a very good option for starting positions, that lack food but should not be all that great for fertile locations.

i think the real problem with ics is neither the global food bonus nor the global communist production bonus. it is the happiness mechanic that's not working here, and this is due to the fact, that even small towns can easily be happy-neutral AND profitable commerce-wise at the same time.

i have mentioned a possible solution to that before: make the first happiness-building, the colloseum, produce happiness in relation to population (+1 happiness per 3 population for example, possibly but not necessarily with an upper cap of, say, +6 happiness). no need to fix a myriad of different mechanics, just one simple fix and horizontal vs. vertical expansion gets to be a real tradeoff, like it should be.

 

[Wayan]

I honestly haven't played with the ICS stratergy or heavily expanded in any of my games due to personal choice, so excuse me if what I say next shows little understanding of the stratergy being used.
I'm assuming (possibly wrongly so, but I've seen it in many 'can't have large empires without happiness being crippling threads') That using an ICS stratergy, your happiness is taking a big hit?
If I'm correct in this assumption, then maybe a way to counter the apparent overpoweredness of this stratergy would be to make having little happiness hurt more, or boost the gains of having a huge surplus of hapiness.

How about making golden ages (which you should have more of with less cities) also effect your science rate. I'll throw double out there for good measure. Your 16+pop cities will gain far more from a GA then than your multiple smaller cities, plus having abundant excess hapiness will mean you could have many more of them. A boost to your Great people rate could help too. Instead of nerfing ICS, provide incentive to grow vertically instead.

I can't take this stance that 'CiV is fundamentally broken at core level seriously'. The AI is fundementally brain dead yes, I concede that whole heartidly. This inturn means the player will get away with abusing the system even more. In Sulla's own example the AI didn't at all try and counter anything he was doing. If the AI put up any kind of a challenge at all, this would make what he acheived much harder to do. His ICS wouldn't be so carefree and easy versus a human player, or an even slightly intelligent AI.

Until the AI is at least somewhat competent I can't take any call for game swiping balance changes seriously, As the very balance that is missing is a challenging opponent, which inturn throws balance completely out of whack. How does ICS fare in multiplayer?

 

[pi-r8]

Maybe you should explain this part better then. I don't see how you would be "far" in the lead on tech if your population growth was heavily nerfed and you couldn't afford to be pumping out scientists.

Frankly after such changes a small civ pumping great scientists should be pummeling your ICS in tech growth.

Is it because you're still getting a lot of great scientists with this strat?

Well the thing is, population growth is much faster for small cities, even without maritime CS. Growth after pop 10 is incredibly slow.

And what do you mean, couldn't afford to pump out scientists? The best way to get scientists now is to have lots of cities running 2 or 3 scientists. Having one city running 4 or 5 scientists, even with max bonuses, can't compete at all.

Let's say you've got a big city with university, public school, and research lab running 5 scientists, with maxed bonuses for a total bonus of +100% gpp. This is the absolute max you can ever get, so it won't happen often. Anyway that's giving you 30 gpp/turn. With ICS, I can very easily get 10 size 4 cities, each with a library and 2 scientists, giving 60 gpp/turn. And the small research cities break even in cost, while the big research city probably doesn't. The normal beaker output of the small cities is also much higher, because their total population is much higher.

 

[Nutteria]

You don`t need Maritime to make a ICS.I`d go as far as to say that early Culture city-states can bring you WAY bigger imbalance toards ICS esp. in the higher difficulties.But in the end even if you play with 0 city-states there is no stoping ICS from being the dominant and most optimal way to play Civ 5.It will just take longer to achieve Victory that is all.

What is worse even IF the AI gets better at warfare - Hell even if it gets Kasparov tactical skills at warfare ICS will still be the answer simply because you can instabuild 20 Units in a single turn should you choose to pile up your gold.

So no City-states are not the problem here.It is the inheritly terribad core mechanics that mess things up.

 

[ohioastronomy]

If you're going to penalize sprawl you have to leave a way for people to build a normal Civ-style empire on a reasonably large map. If you just add penalties on top of penalties it'll actually make the game worse, believe it or not.

 

[Frosty_AUT]

i think the real problem with ics is neither the global food bonus nor the global communist production bonus. it is the happiness mechanic that's not working here, and this is due to the fact, that even small towns can easily be happy-neutral AND profitable commerce-wise at the same time.

i have mentioned a possible solution to that before: make the first happiness-building, the colloseum, produce happiness in relation to population (+1 happiness per 3 population for example, possibly but not necessarily with an upper cap of, say, +6 happiness). no need to fix a myriad of different mechanics, just one simple fix and horizontal vs. vertical expansion gets to be a real tradeoff, like it should be.

What really breaks the happiness mechanic is this combination:

Meritocracy (+1 happiness per city connected to trade network)
Forbidden palace (-1 unhappiness per city (or "-50% unhappiness from number of cities" as the game calls it, which is a lie))
Planned economy (does the same as forbidden palace)

This results in cities only producing unhappiness for population, with the first citizen being "free". Couple that with all the other effects of having cities all over the place (happiness buildings, luxuries) and being allied with nearly every CS on the map (again, luxuries), and happiness will never be an issue again.

Actually, even if happiness was an issue with this kind of strategy, happiness has no effect on science and gold income.