Tall vs wide idea

[universecreep]

This issue - tall vs wide - has been an ongoing problem with Civ games since Civ i.

For the most part, wide has been much stronger in game play than tall. Vi is no different. In order to really have a shot at winning the science victory, you really have to go wide as it's the easiest way to get more citizens.

V was the only civ to make tall an option. Unfortunately, it did so at the expense of really being able to go wide.

From a perspective of VI since this is the only one that will get official updates/expansions from now on, wide is the way to go right now.
However, one option to make tall doable is to make large cities get extra bonuses, be able to build more powerful buildings. I'll use the real world example (I know realism doesn't make for fun but bear with me) of New York. It's one of the primary cities in the world. It has many structures that you wouldn't find in a regular city (Portland for example) - the UN for example - because it is a major center of the world. The UN wouldn't be the UN without it being in New York (or some other major city).

The same could be done with Civ VI. Why not have certain wonders only be able to be built in large cities (30+) for example. How about more powerful versions of buildings/defensive structures be available to be built (or be upgraded) once a city becomes a certain size. You could make these buildings powerful so that it would make it possible for a Civ that is tall can still compete against one that is wide.

The city size that triggers the upgrades/building availability could be made available incrementally (15/20/30+) so that you could have the possibility of using them earlier in the game rather than only at the end when your city is 30+.
For example, at size 15, perhaps a factory would get a +5 production, at 20 + 10, at 30 +20. Or perhaps higher bonuses. I'm not sure as I don't know how high he bonuses would have to be to make the city competitive.

Also, to avoid making a super-overpowered city that is all things to all people, perhaps you would have to declare a specialization at some point. For example, at size 15 you could choose to make it a science city, production city, military city, etc which would then give you the specified bonuses/access to build the special buildings.

Thanks for reading.

Any thoughts?

 

[Leyrann]

First I do want to mention, that the "tall vs wide" debate has not been going since Civilization I. In fact, in Civilization I-IV, the question was not "how big should an empire be?", but rather "how fast should an empire be allowed to expand?"

Having said that, I think you have an amazing idea right here, and I'd love to make a longer post about it, but I don't have the time right now. I'll probably return to participate in the discussion of this thread though.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I like the idea. Maybe something like the National Wonders from Civ V? Here in the US, we have the New York and Los Angeles metro areas, with populations equal to 5-10 mid-sized cities. The NYC metro area, for instance, has more people than the San Antonio, Portland, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Kansas City and Austin metro areas combined. In the UK, the London metro area has a population about equal to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, and Newcastle combined. (I just looked at metro areas in Wikipedia and did the math in my head, so I'm not being very exact, but you get the idea.)

One problem the AI currently has is not settling wide-open areas. That's part of the reason I end up with a huge country every game, and why I've taken to stuffing my games with the maximum number of civs. So anything that encourages the AI to turtle any more would be counter-productive, but I really think the AI's reticence to settle land constitutes some kind of de facto bug, and isn't just the logical outcome of an analysis of the costs and benefits.

 

[kaspergm]

I kind of like the idea of certain buildings only being available if a city reaches a certain size. I think it should work like this: If a city reaches the threshold - say, size 20 - it can build a "premium building" in one of its districts. This building will work a bit like a national wonder of Civ5, so you can only have one of this type of buildings in your empire. There can be subsequent thresholds (say, size 30, 40, 50 ...) to allow you to build additional premium buildings in the same city.

Some other thoughts on the wide vs. tall debate:

• Wide should be better. Full stop. Tall should only be viable if you go extremely tall, which should be hard to pull off.
• Minimum size of city to construct first district should be raised. MadDjinn has some good points on this in one of the recent Polycast episodes. It could be 3 or 4 pop for first district.
• Stability of very wide empires needs to be compromised. This was discussed in the DLC06 thread. Someone suggested some sort of "unity" or "revolt" meter that would shift towards stability or revolt depending on things like happiness, military presence, culture output etc. If a city or many cities sustain long periods of unhappiness and go far down on the revolt meter, they should revolt and form a satellite empire.
• AI needs to be better to expand and manage their empire. It has far too big tendency to settle cities with huge distance between them and leave large swaths of fertile lands right next to their capital unclaimed.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

I think your suggestion is definitely an option to be considered. The down side of it is that not everbody cares about (building) wonders. So this will not be a valid argument for them to go tall. But this idea along with other mechanics could definitely work out. If you check the DLC6 anticipation thread, you will find posts from last week or so that especially discussed the tall vs wide option. There are plenty of mechanics mentioned which could work together with your suggestion. One of the mechanics suggested over there is to use policy cards and/or government types that will give benfits to tall empires. This suggestion seems for me the best solution as for now with current system of civ6.

 

[Arent11]

From a perspective of VI since this is the only one that will get official updates/expansions from now on, wide is the way to go right now.
However, one option to make tall doable is to make large cities get extra bonuses, be able to build more powerful buildings. I'll use the real world example (I know realism doesn't make for fun but bear with me) of New York. It's one of the primary cities in the world. It has many structures that you wouldn't find in a regular city (Portland for example) - the UN for example - because it is a major center of the world. The UN wouldn't be the UN without it being in New York (or some other major city).

I've always been kind of a ~hybrid player, but I would support any kind of changes that promote ~peaceful/builder play styles (not necessarily tall, just builder vs momentum) for the simple reason of variety.
Civilization is not just about conquest. It is also about peaceful settlement, exploration of the unknown, the wonder of researching cool new technologies. Civ 6 has many good new features, but I got the impression that it is a little bit of a one trick pony.

Of course I can play peaceful, it just doesn't make much sense. In Master of Orion 2, if I maintain peaceful relations, my trade revenues will rise, in civilization 4, if I have good relations, I can trade tech. In civ 6 I can't trade tech & my trade routes don't become better when I have better relations.

 

[kaspergm]

I've always been kind of a ~hybrid player, but I would support any kind of changes that promote ~peaceful/builder play styles (not necessarily tall, just builder vs momentum) for the simple reason of variety.
Civilization is not just about conquest. It is also about peaceful settlement, exploration of the unknown, the wonder of researching cool new technologies. Civ 6 has many good new features, but I got the impression that it is a little bit of a one trick pony.

Well, doesn't Civ6 already promote that? Sure, you might win fastest if you go conquest (if for no other reason than how inapt the AI is), so if that's the parameter you measure by, I guess you're right. But in terms of viable strategies, a builder-wide strategy is certainly strongly favored by the game compared to the static 4-city approach of Civ5 (something I strongly applaud Civ6 for).

 

[Arent11]

Well, doesn't Civ6 already promote that? Sure, you might win fastest if you go conquest (if for no other reason than how inapt the AI is), so if that's the parameter you measure by, I guess you're right. But in terms of viable strategies, a builder-wide strategy is certainly strongly favored by the game compared to the static 4-city approach of Civ5 (something I strongly applaud Civ6 for).

That is true, however, I have not really an incentive to maintain a good reputation. In civ 4, reputation was important so that other civs would trade techs with me. It was also important because there was a passive trade that strongly helped your science/economy if you had good relations.

 

[craney1987]

I like any idea that could possibly make both tall and wide viable in the same game.
Having to adapt strategy and change playing style to suit either playing tall or wide would add great variety to the game.

Balance is the problem. As it's currently quicker to increase population by building new cities rather than growing your cities tall, I think that the only way to start this would be to have each new city built become harder to grow population. So that 4 cities with 25 pop reach that level in the same time that an empire with, say, 15 cities reaches the same level. Then build cards or wonders on top of that to make each style unique to play.

The problem here is you will end up with a ciV style optimum number of cities for either tall or wide and I think the developers wanted to move away from that every game get to 'x'number of cities, Win game. Type of play

 

[Arent11]

The problem here is you will end up with a ciV style optimum number of cities for either tall or wide and I think the developers wanted to move away from that every game get to 'x'number of cities, Win game. Type of play

Why not just have something like "1 happiness for every pop unit" & you yourself can decide whether you have those pop units in few cities or many cities?
In addition, you could have civics that promote either happiness in large cities or in many small cities, so you yourself can determine what shape your empire has in the long run.

Of course you would have to abolish luxury goods, because they inherently promote wide play.

 

[Lee Duane Fitzsimmons]

I generally build a tall core and then go wide gradually throughout the rest of the game.

I'm sorry people, I gotta have my cake and eat it too.

What I do is get 5 or 6 cities right away and then build those into a tall foundation for my empire. In addition, I will continue to found more cities and expand as the game progresses; however, I limit my expansion to levels that do not tax my resources.

This is how I roll...

 

[EgonSpengler]

I don't think population is the important reason to go "wide." Districts are how you achieve any of the Victory Conditions (except for Domination, I guess - you don't need Encampments for that), and N+1 Districts is always better than N Districts. 2 Campuses generate more Science than 1, and 3 generate more than 2, etc.

Capturing or building a new city doesn't meaningfully slow construction in the cities you already have. It delays construction a little, because you have to build the Settler or the military units. District costs increase with each era, but that's true regardless of how many cities you have. The advantage to a smaller nation is, theoretically, that you get started building your Districts sooner because you aren't building Settlers or military units, but I don't think that balance has been struck - I'm convinced it's better to build military units early and capture cities, then build Districts later and swallow the increased cost.

District cost go down if the other civs have built a lot of that type, but you don't win the game by taking advantage of bonuses you get for losing. Anyway, there is no drawback to building another of a given District, regardless of how many you have, beyond the opportunity cost of not building a different District that you need more, but once again, having more cities ameliorates this problem also, because the limit on the number of Districts is per city.

When it comes to population growth, once again N+1 is always better than N. You lose a pop when you construct a Settler, but you immediately gain it back when you found the new city, and then you've got two cities producing population simultaneously. The first city you build or capture isn't N+1, it's Nx2. Early in the game, you capture an enemy Settler, capture their Capital and build a Settler of your own, and you're Nx4, with space to grow (because you're wiped out a competitor and therefore have Additionally, new cities is how you get more luxuries and amenities, improving your growth again.

And of course the benefit of settling and capturing cities compounds because territory control is a zero-sum game; every city you capture or found isn't just a city for a you, it's a city taken away from your competition.

 

[Buckets]

I like the idea of unlocking things via population. I could see even basic buildings having requirements: Library - requires 2 districts in city, University - requires 3 districts, Lab - requires 4 -- for example. Along with some policies (X benefit for N districts) one might actually want to grow large cities. Currently it seems better to just spread everything out.

I'm not keen on mechanics like corruption or city maintenance or stability because I think additional cities should always be a benefit. Maybe there's good way to do it. I'm open to new ideas. But, I think the real problem is the AI. The challenge in acquiring territory should be competition.

 

[Karpius]

From a purely historical point of view, tall and wide go hand in hand. There are many reasons why civilizations sought to extend their influence beyond the core, the most common being to enrich the core.

Tall growth is not sustainable without an influx of resources. This requires an extension of the base. Extension of the base cannot be sustained without a strong influence from the core. Historically, this influence was achieved through simple conquest.

Both tall and wide are challenged by their own set of pressures. As something grows taller it begins to strain under its own weight which must be girded in some fashion. As a civilization spreads out, the fringes are under pressure from a myriad of sources, such as differing cultures and religions, extended lines of communication (vital to keeping the frontier tied to the core) and other political entities seeking to do the very same.

The ideal shape is neither tall nor wide, but a pyramid. I know that is a gross oversimplification, but illustrates the tendency.

 

[Lee Duane Fitzsimmons]

From a purely historical point of view, tall and wide go hand in hand. There are many reasons why civilizations sought to extend their influence beyond the core, the most common being to enrich the core.

Tall growth is not sustainable without an influx of resources. This requires an extension of the base. Extension of the base cannot be sustained without a strong influence from the core. Historically, this influence was achieved through simple conquest.

Both tall and wide are challenged by their own set of pressures. As something grows taller it begins to strain under its own weight which must be girded in some fashion. As a civilization spreads out, the fringes are under pressure from a myriad of sources, such as differing cultures and religions, extended lines of communication (vital to keeping the frontier tied to the core) and other political entities seeking to do the very same.

The ideal shape is neither tall nor wide, but a pyramid. I know that is a gross oversimplification, but illustrates the tendency.

This is EXACTLY the same concept that I was describing in my post.

"Pyramid" is the perfect term to describe this idea.

Thanks, Karplus...

 

[UWHabs]

From a purely historical point of view, tall and wide go hand in hand. There are many reasons why civilizations sought to extend their influence beyond the core, the most common being to enrich the core.

Tall growth is not sustainable without an influx of resources. This requires an extension of the base. Extension of the base cannot be sustained without a strong influence from the core. Historically, this influence was achieved through simple conquest.

Both tall and wide are challenged by their own set of pressures. As something grows taller it begins to strain under its own weight which must be girded in some fashion. As a civilization spreads out, the fringes are under pressure from a myriad of sources, such as differing cultures and religions, extended lines of communication (vital to keeping the frontier tied to the core) and other political entities seeking to do the very same.

The ideal shape is neither tall nor wide, but a pyramid. I know that is a gross oversimplification, but illustrates the tendency.

Maybe the best way to handle this would be for internal trade routes to give food to the destination city, and production to the source city? Then trades routes would tend to be mostly outer cities -> core, so that helps the core cities get bigger and the outer cities be more productive. You'd probably need to change the algorithm to limit core -> core routes (maybe something like taking the destination districts but removing any that the source city already has, so that if you have 2 cities with identical districts it would only be a +1/+1 route), but that could help shape things to make sure the core cities grow larger, and the outer cities stay productive.

 

[craney1987]

So many ideas Here. And I like all of them.

 

[universecreep]

If the devs don't make the changes, I wonder if a mod could be made to implement such things? I ask because I'm not really sure how much can be changed with a mod and how much is hard coded.

 

[Leyrann]

Well, here I am finally, four days after my promise I'd come back.

Basically, the idea is as follows: Larger cities can do things that smaller cities cannot, and not simply in being bigger and being able to build more, but in opening up new options, instead of being able to select more of the same options. I want to add the idea of the pyramid (mentioned earlier in this thread) to that, as the core of an empire is indeed often sustained by the rural areas, and I also want to call back to a discussion before the release of Civ 6, where it was said that the "wide vs tall" might be replaced by "urban vs rural".

Before going into detail, one of the biggest advantages for a system like this, in my opinion, is that it does not penalize a player for making a choice, be it "building a new city" (wide) or "growing a city" (tall). Instead, it grants bonuses depending on what you choose - the only penalty is not unlocking something because you're choosing for something else, which feels very different from a player perspective.

Now, going wide already unlocks things: Most importantly, it unlocks the ability to grow more cities, and to build more units and buildings at the same time. In Civilization VI in particular, it grants the advantage of being able to build more districts of the desired kind; after you've built a campus with the at-that-point-available buildings, there's no way to further increase the science in the city (excluding the minor science per pop), except building a settler and building another campus in that new city. Going tall, however, unlocks relatively little: only said minor amount of science and culture, as well as some tile yields, though this tends to be insignificant apart from the production yield, which you can of course convert into all kinds of other things. To add to that, population growth in Civilization VI is relatively slow; I, at least, barely ever get the eureka's related to "largest city"; only Early Empire I do normally get, and I typically have 2 cities already at that point.

So, there needs to be a bonus for having bigger cities, to balance against having more of them. As @universecreep mentioned (or in fact started the thread with), a good idea to do this is to add bonuses to big cities, is to make them population-restricted; this basically solves all problems that a system might have at once: It cannot be accessed by just spamming cities (which would defeat the whole purpose), it can be explained flavour-wise (smaller cities cannot support such things) and it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, as it is a 'reward' you unlock by growing your city to a certain size, even if this reward still requires you to pour in production; just make it worth that production.

Now, there are two main systems possible for these bonuses, a passive, and an active system. A passive system is very simple: When you reach size X, you gain bonus Y. An active system not only requires you to reach size X, but to actually get bonus Y, you need to do something. In Civilization terms, that will most likely mean two different things. The first is to add buildings, that most likely require a district (or even two) on top of the city size requirement. The second is to add wonder-like buildings that require an own tile, but are not unique, in that more than one may be built of them. They may be limited to one per civilization, but do not neccessarily need to be. This depends both on how strong their bonuses are, and how the balance works out in practise.

As for passive systems, these may be automatic ("once a city reaches size 15, you gain +5 science, +5 culture, +5 faith, +5 production, +10 gold, +1 amenity", or a "every citizen beyond size X" version of this to reduce spiking) or may be depending on districts you have (I would like to see this part for certain, as it increases the importance of districts) and may additionally require a player choice, where you can maybe select a bonus to only one of your districts (and therefore yields). For example, a city reaches size 20 while having a Campus, Industrial Zone, Commercial Hub, Encampment and Harbor. Now, the turn this city reaches size 20, you get a choice:

(just some not neccissarily balanced ideas for what you could do)

1. +5 science, +20% science in this city.
2. +15 production.
3. +8 gold, +2 trade routes.
4. +50% production towards units.
5. +10 gold, +5 food.

Note that a deliberate part of this (at least from me) is that you cannot specialize a city towards a district you build after reaching the threshold. This makes sense from a flavour perspective in particular, as, say, a Theater Square built after would not be a historical part of the city; the cultural importance was attracted to the city after it became big, while historically, it might've been a scientific hub instead.

Now, there are two more things I have not yet addressed. These are fun ideas to incentivize (sp?) bigger cities, but they do not stop you from simply going wide first, and then afterwards going tall, and simply getting this in all your 20 cities. However, this can be solved through the other thing: The empire is not yet pyramid-formed, as cities do not really interact with one another. To change this, trade routes are split: There are now domestic traders as well as international traders. International traders are limited by harbors, commercial hubs, etc, whereas domestic traders are limited by things like the amount of cities owned. Of course, this is the basis, and there could very well be more factors, also because domestic and international trade routes no longer need to be balanced against one another, allowing more freedom to tweak.

Next, those domestic traders do not anymore generate a heap of food and production. Rather, they transport food and/or production from one city to another and generate a minor revenue (taxes over the transported goods). This allows you to build rural cities with a lot of farmland, and then send traders from those cities to your central cities, giving you the food required to turn those cities into megacities (also solving the problem mentioned in my third paragraph that cities grow too slowly) and at the same time freeing up more land in those central cities for districts, wonders and whatever else, as you no longer need to have farms locally anymore. This allows for two different playstyles: A "tall" playstyle, where you use rural cities to pump up your core cities, which turn into urban megacities with special buildings, tons of adjacency bonuses, etc. On the other hand, a "wide" playstyle, with self-sustaining cities that have a few districts at most, but all directly contributing to your empire (instead of being food silos) and being able to do stuff. It should be noted that, for both styles, more cities is better. However, a tall playstyle will still mean less need for micromanagement compared to a wide style, which (at least in my understanding) is the most important reason for people prefering tall. On top of this, it would be possible to add a way to import food from other countries, actually removing the requirement of the rural cities, which can, basically, be owned by a neighbouring civilization.

This last thing would actually bring back tall playstyle as it was before - just a few, big megacities. However, it would do so without strangling wide (as happened in Civ V), and on top of that it would require good relations with your neighbors, just like real life "tall" countries like the Netherlands (we actually got a surprising amount of farmland by the way) or Japan (who probably got a surprising amount of farmland as well, I guess).

As for a mod doing these things, I suppose it could be possible, but a modder might need access to the source code for it, which is not yet available, but has been made available for every prior Civ game. I am actually going to tag @Gedemon to ask for his thoughts about this in general and maybe the possibility to add some sort of it to his overhaul mod.

Edit: And this might just be the longest post I've ever seen on this site. Apologies.

 

[Gedemon]

If the devs don't make the changes, I wonder if a mod could be made to implement such things? I ask because I'm not really sure how much can be changed with a mod and how much is hard coded.

Some buildings unlocked by population ? that's possible using a framework like LeeS' Dummy Buildings Utilities or some other Lua method to add "fake" buildings unlocking another one when certain conditions are meet (like city size, number of districts, etc...)

I think you can already set national wonder without additional code, for example you could set the number of world instance of the Ruhr Valley from 1 to -1 (means no limit) and its number of player instance to 1 (note that's untested, and some entries in the database are not linked to a working code on the game's side...)

Or set both instance to -1 and use a building unlocker as mentioned above to make it available only for city of size 15, 20, 30 or whatever you want to balance it.

@Leyrann: my own mod will use stability as a primary mechanism, but city specialization will also be a factor, not going into details here, but the number of building you could have in a city will be limited, until the city reach a size threshold to unlock a new district (an extension of the city center, placed on an adjacent tile) to add new buildings, up to 3-4 extensions to create a true megalopolis. Don't get too hyped, that's long-term...