Tall and Wide Empires

[Darth Tribble]

Civ5 changed the gameplay of civs by adding penalties to big empires and seemed to favor small empires with fewer cities.

Will it be the same in this game? While I liked the Civ5 made it easier to win as a small empire where, in older games, you would be sorely behind, it seems to discourage vast empires too much and there is little reason to go wide. I miss the ICS and continent and half empires I used to build in Civ4.

I hope this Civ games allows more flexibility in the sizes of empires. Maybe have wide or ICS empires have certain advantages while smaller empires have different advantages.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I don't think we have enough information to really say. We know that the designers don't want civ6 to have the same go-to strategies as civ5. We also know that global happiness has been replaced with local happiness. This could mean that wide is much better than in civ5. But we don't know if large empires will get any kind of penalties.

 

[stroypa]

My biggest issue with V is definitely the fact it's very very hard to go wide. It's annoying because it limits how you can play, and expanding and having a large empire is much more fun than being heavily constrained. It's also incredibly unrealistic. Having more land, more resources, more people, more power is a huge advantage and civilisations were usually trying to get bigger and expand not limit their own growth. I can forgive pretty much everything else, but please please allow me to have a large empire.

 

[manu-fan]

From what we've seen so far, it looks like wide will be a fine strategy. Every city has it's own happiness, which is a huge boost to going wide.

 

[Nixalo]

We don't know yet. All we know is that poorly placed and poorly managed cities will be weak and not grow. We don't know if REXing with a bunch of bad cities for land is discouraged.

I would prefer in tall or wide is determined by your terrain.

High food capitals and cities go wide. Grassland and Coastal starts.
High production capitals and cities go tall. Forest and hilly starts.
Desert starts could be one city challenge via Petra/Pyramids.

 

[Captain Fargle]

Given the way the new districts systems work I imagine OCC is going to possible only the most extremely favourable of starts. Otherwise with everything we've seen so far Tall vs Wide is probably going to end up depending on resource/terrain distribution.

 

[Calyxx]

One of my biggest problems with the end state of Civ V was that there were generally fairly large areas of the map that were simply... unsettled. Borders only clashed if you ended up starting very close to another Civ, and even in the modern ere there was just way too much unused space.

 

[Leathaface]

My biggest issue with V is definitely the fact it's very very hard to go wide. It's annoying because it limits how you can play, and expanding and having a large empire is much more fun than being heavily constrained. It's also incredibly unrealistic. Having more land, more resources, more people, more power is a huge advantage and civilisations were usually trying to get bigger and expand not limit their own growth. I can forgive pretty much everything else, but please please allow me to have a large empire.

These are my thoughts exactly. Needing a Circus Maximum to found your 4th city (without huge penalties) is completely ridiculous.

 

[Lucius_]

My (not so) wild guess will be there will be a penalty to science and culture based on the number of cities. If so, ICS may not be viable, but large empires will, as long as most of your cities has space for the districts to counteract the negative effects of settling a new city and still grow to at least a certain size.

 

[Acken]

I'm okay with them removing global hapiness. Having empire wide issues because of a new city was never a really good mechanic. It however did its job as an expansion limiter.

On the other hand I want them to keep diminishing returns for empire for size. Or a nerf to growth based on size. Things like that.
Problem arises mainly when your individual cities in a wide empire can become as big as those in a small empire (It's then no longer wide, it's Wide&Tall). This is where the balance breaks in favor of wide empires. Global happiness somewhat does its job here by making sure your overall population is not too big for wide empires.

Civ5 was close to good balance between the two play style. Regardless of what its detractors like to say, wide (8 cities) is efficient enough to be in the same ball park of small/tall (4 cities) in term of efficiency (on standard size). Its main constraint being that it is simply harder to manage the happiness and sometimes just not possible to pull off because of the map.

Make new cities easy to make and not empire wide punishing but make them less efficient the more you have.

Since the hapiness is now local to limit population, a good way would be to play on that factor where small empires have more room per city. At least they kept the fixed number of trade routes. Which is an excellent way to help balance this if internal routes are still at the advantage of small empires through growth bonus and the like.


Failing to do that would be civBE REX all over again. Not that REX is the worst thing but it becomes a bit boring to do it everygame.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm okay with them removing global hapiness. Having empire wide issues because of a new city was never a really good mechanic.

Part of the problem was the flavor packaging. For example, if they had called it "Stability" than the idea of more cities making it harder for the government to keep things in check suddenly makes a lot more sense.

That said, I am fine with a different mechanic....but it just goes to show how much flavor can make a mechanic work.

 

[rastak]

Civ5 changed the gameplay of civs by adding penalties to big empires and seemed to favor small empires with fewer cities.

Will it be the same in this game? While I liked the Civ5 made it easier to win as a small empire where, in older games, you would be sorely behind, it seems to discourage vast empires too much and there is little reason to go wide. I miss the ICS and continent and half empires I used to build in Civ4.

I hope this Civ games allows more flexibility in the sizes of empires. Maybe have wide or ICS empires have certain advantages while smaller empires have different advantages.

I think it actually allowed smaller empires to be viable. They really were not in 1-4. I am one of the very few it seems that like smaller empires so it was very cool for me to able to pursue that. Not sure if 6 will allow that but I'll adapt.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Tall empires ignore 2 of 4 in 4X. While it should be possible to play tall, it shouldn't be as viable as wide empires.

Civ6 looks like a step in the right direction here, but there are worries what the game don't prevent city spam enough. That's discussed in another thread.

 

[Stilgar08]

Was it in the IGN-article where they state there's no problem with going wide? No caps like health or global happiness! You would have far less science, but very good culture-values... This means you won't have the best units but you might benefit from big bonuses from culture.
So I'd say chances are high, we indeed have different ways to approach victory, wide and tall, hereby making civvi feel more epic.

In Ed we trust (and his team, of course)

 

[Plus Ultra]

Tall/Wide balancing is one of the things that has me more confused.

Now that land seems more important (so many wonders, districts, UI and tile improvements to place!), going wide seems the best strategy.

More land means:

More efficient district placement.
By going wide you can have a Science district surrounded by mountains and rainforest (+4 science) and don't care about loosing space for other districts or wonders.

More wonders can be built
Not only because they use up valuable space, which is less relevant the more space you have, but because they have (at least some of them) specific terrain requirements.

Remember those 4 cities with every building imaginable you used to have in Civ V? Good luck placing the 12 districts + wonders on each of them, and still hoping to have good production and enough food to allow for growth!

I'm getting the feeling than going Tall as in "4 cities" will not longer be viable unless the oponents are around that number too (for example, a tiny islands map). Maybe the minumum cities to compete against a very wide empire will be higher this time around (let's say, for example, 6) and only viable with awesome terrain. Not sure that's a bad thing.

 

[kaltorak]

I hope that they improve going wide, but I also hope they don't do it the ICS way. Even going wide, I like cities beeing important, not just the more the better

 

[MadDjinn]

'tall empires' should never be a goal to balance for. It's basically just a slightly bigger City State - and I've made City States in CivV have more than 4 cities.

but ICS/super spam of small cities that never grow in pop should also not be a thing.

 

[stealth_nsk]

'tall empires' should never be a goal to balance for. It's basically just a slightly bigger City State - and I've made City States in CivV have more than 4 cities.

but ICS/super spam of small cities that never grow in pop should also not be a thing.

Exactly. Regarding the last point I'd add what early total expansion shouldn't be the only viable strategy even if you're going to grow all your cities.

 

[D712]

'tall empires' should never be a goal to balance for. It's basically just a slightly bigger City State - and I've made City States in CivV have more than 4 cities.

but ICS/super spam of small cities that never grow in pop should also not be a thing.

See, I gotta disagree. Certain civs historically were the size of "large city states" (Ethiopia, the Mayans, Venice...etc) yet still achieved incredible things that warrant their inclusion in the Civilization series.

I get that this is a 4X game, but balancing for both wide and tall empires to prosper so that neither is more advantageous does not inherently dilute that notion in my opinion. There are methods of balancing that I feel were useful in CiV (like culture vs. tourism and science modifiers) that allowed people who stuck to two or three cities to pursue wins in a realistic manner. Though I do think the science penalties for wide empires were too harsh and did end up preventing people from actually expanding. I just think there are ways to balance the wants of culture victory players that like to turtle up and play diplomat while also allowing imperialists and warmongers to thrive until a certain point.

Given the new diplomatic agendas, there's even room for some civ to have a "dislike if you colonize/expand onto their continent from a different continent." There are so many potentials with this new incarnation to try to completely edge out smaller civs.

HOWEVER, after playing a runthrough of Civ 4 yesterday where I used Egypt to win a culture victory AND establish a settler-colony on a large island offshore of my continent, I do empathize with wanting to engage in what feels like colonialism. That aspect of Civilization was completely trashed in CiV and really should be brought back.

 

[MadDjinn]

See, I gotta disagree. Certain civs historically were the size of "large city states" (Ethiopia, the Mayans, Venice...etc) yet still achieved incredible things that warrant their inclusion in the Civilization series.

I get that this is a 4X game, but balancing for both wide and tall empires to prosper so that neither is more advantageous does not inherently dilute that notion in my opinion. There are methods of balancing that I feel were useful in CiV (like culture vs. tourism and science modifiers) that allowed people who stuck to two or three cities to pursue wins in a realistic manner. Though I do think the science penalties for wide empires were too harsh and did end up preventing people from actually expanding. I just think there are ways to balance the wants of culture victory players that like to turtle up and play diplomat while also allowing imperialists and warmongers to thrive until a certain point.

well, I'll give you 'Ethiopia' and 'Mayans' as civs, but not Venice. Venice being Italian, and Italia being the 'civilization' moreso anyways.

Venice brought an interesting mechanical playstyle to CivV precisely because they didn't found many cities -- they took space and other people.

and well, the Mayans died out before they could expand very far, but they were expanding.

Ethiopia was more than a capital, and if it wasn't for that there jungle (and being totally surrounded), they may have expanded more.

But that's neither here nor there because inclusion in Civ is for flavour, not for "did the historical version of the civ do all 4Xs?" (especially for the eXplore one, because some really didn't need to do that).

There are 4Xs, and each should be important in the game.

the overall point though, for me anyways, isn't that someone can sit on 4 10-20 pop cities all game and win (which shouldn't happen), but that someone who makes 10 10-20 pop cities should out and out crush them - give or take specialization/quality vs quantity/etc. eidt: and not be penalized for actually expanding in a 4X game.

But I also agree with the flip side. 20 5 pop cities should be a mess of a 'civ' and get run over by someone with 5 20 pop cities.