The fact about hurry production cost (a bug?)

[KrikkitTwo]

Well looking at the details


With proper Civics/Terrain, Hammers are available at ~3 per tile (Workshops+Mines+Farms)
With proper Civics a Town Produces
1 hammer + 7 commerce
so to be properly viable for Rushing, 3 Terrain Commerces should be equivalent to about 1 Terrain hammers

Now the Gold Multipliers necessarily must be included so
3 Terrain Commerce => 6 Gold = 1 Terrain Hammers

The fact that gold can be concentrated from many cities is accounted for in the fact that Wonders+National Wonders cost Extra (perhaps those amounts should be changed to x4 and x2 instead of x2 and x1.5 to reflect that more)

I'd suggest
1. change the basic cost of Rushing to 5
2. make units cost x1.5
3. Make National Wonders Cost x2
4. Make Wonders Cost x4

That way it will be worthwhile to Rush
Buildings without the Kremlin, and
Just Started Buildings, Units, and National Wonders with the Kremlin

Production is still useful for Projects, and Pre-Kremlin Wonders
*Post Kremlin Wonders would basically require US if there is somewhat of a race on, which means that the Space Elevator, 3 GD, the 'Hits' Wonders, and the UN would go to Towned Democracies, and since the other major Government/Terrain types
Workshopped Police State is concentrating on War and so doesn't need those Wonders.
or
Farmed Republic is getting higher Science and so should start on them earlier.

Finally
5. Make Slavery act like Chop Rushing.... you don't Rush something, you just eliminate 1 pop for a Speed based amount of shields and a # of unhappiness-turns..probably still 30+10 on Normal. The Kremlin doubling the shield output, none of the other 'Rushing' effects. [just hit it as many times as you need, which may or may not be enough to finish in one turn]

 

[Roland Johansen]

I disagree. I don't think that every building should be built cheaper by rushing it than by building it by normal production. That makes normal production far too unimportant. It is something that you only use for the few cities that build wonders under your rules.

By the way, you rounded 7/2 down to 3 at the start of your post. If rushing has an equal cost to normal production, then it is still more interesting to rush. This is because you can use gold for everything, for research, building stuff anywhere in your empire at any time, upgrading units, spying missions, buying resources, etc. If gold is equal or more efficient at the one thing that hammers can do, namely produce stuff, then what good are hammers in this game?

 

[Beamup]

I'd go so far as to say that cash-rushing should never be competitive with, much less better than, building with hammers, except maybe with the Kremlin. It should be something you do when you can't build it with hammers for some reason.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I'd go so far as to say that cash-rushing should never be competitive with, much less better than, building with hammers, except maybe with the Kremlin. It should be something you do when you can't build it with hammers for some reason.

Or if you want it quick for some reason (a unit for defending a crucial city, culture production boost in a border city by building a cathedral, etc. ).

 

[Beamup]

That would still be "can't build it with hammers for some reason." The "some reason" being, in this case, "don't have (and can't get) enough of them."

 

[DaviddesJ]

DaviddJ, you were the first to post this imbalance in this thread. Are you willing to post a bug report about this?

I've know that Soren and other Firaxians have at least heard the complaints about gold rushing being overpowered (as well as the other major imbalance in the game, forest chopping). But I'm afraid the force of my logic has not been sufficiently powerful. My impression is that they are reluctant to make major balance adjustments at this point in time, at least without a strong community consensus (and on any point, including this one, you can always find people who disagree---especially those who become used to using a particular strategy at a particular level and then complain that they are "disadvantaged" if it is tuned down). Most of their efforts are going into patching performance and multiplayer issues, which is understandable. I think we may have to wait for an expansion to see major balance adjustments (as we saw with Civ3 and C3C).

 

[Roland Johansen]

That would still be "can't build it with hammers for some reason." The "some reason" being, in this case, "don't have (and can't get) enough of them."

Mwah, technically yes...

I've know that Soren and other Firaxians have at least heard the complaints about gold rushing being overpowered (as well as the other major imbalance in the game, forest chopping). But I'm afraid the force of my logic has not been sufficiently powerful. My impression is that they are reluctant to make major balance adjustments at this point in time, at least without a strong community consensus (and on any point, including this one, you can always find people who disagree---especially those who become used to using a particular strategy at a particular level and then complain that they are "disadvantaged" if it is tuned down). Most of their efforts are going into patching performance and multiplayer issues, which is understandable. I think we may have to wait for an expansion to see major balance adjustments (as we saw with Civ3 and C3C).

I didn't know that Firaxis was aware of this imbalance. Do they know about the details of the imbalance? I don't want to see an expansion pack where the imbalance is fixed wrong.
I can see that they're not going to fix major balance issues in a patch. But I'm not sure if they're going to do it in an expansion pack either. If not enough complaints arise about this, then it's not going to be changed. And I think you're right about the players who like it because they now know how to play the game best with the present rules and a rule change would change that.

I have played Civ 3 vanilla, PTW and C3C. Are you talking about the changes to corruption in C3C? I personally think that the changes needed to reduce the effectiveness of forest chopping and gold rushing in Civ4 will effect gameplay a lot more than the changes done to corruption in C3C. I hope that these changes will occur anyway.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I disagree. I don't think that every building should be built cheaper by rushing it than by building it by normal production. That makes normal production far too unimportant. It is something that you only use for the few cities that build wonders under your rules.

By the way, you rounded 7/2 down to 3 at the start of your post. If rushing has an equal cost to normal production, then it is still more interesting to rush. This is because you can use gold for everything, for research, building stuff anywhere in your empire at any time, upgrading units, spying missions, buying resources, etc. If gold is equal or more efficient at the one thing that hammers can do, namely produce stuff, then what good are hammers in this game?

Well that still requires Fully developed Towns and Free Speech, and all the Gold buildings, (which implies a long period of development which means you probably have the buildings already)

and also hammers are more efficient at something that becomes important later on, ie Projects
so for Space Race, Hammers would still be necessary in at least a few cities
and for a Cultural Win, you aren't using Gold anyways


Perhaps the easiest thing might be eliminate the 'production bonus' effect for gold rushing. Powered Factories, Special Wonder resources, Organized Religion, Leader Bonuses, Heroic Epic, Dry Docks, etc. all help you build with Hammers but Don't help you with Gold

which would mean
1 commerce=2 gold=2/X hammers for stuff

1 hammer=2 hammers for stuff (in most cities with Factories)

So X just has to be the Town Commerce / Workshop extra hammers ratio, which is exactly 3.5 (but 3 rounds off nicer)
making them Slightly better (Town would still have an equivalent of 3.3333 hammers, but that would require the full production... perhaps if it was 4 then Towns would have an equivalent of 2.75 hammers, unless you were financial then it would be exactly 3)

So Eliminate the Bonus effect entirely and make the conversion 4

and then put in the increased cost for Wonders, National Wonders, and Units

Since those are the things hammers are focused on... contributions to your empire as a whole as opposed to local improvements, which US allows gold to take care of (essentially it 'brings your cities up to standard' quicker)

So Iron Works, Heroic Epic cities are still best with lots of Hammers of their own rather than relying on neighboring cities with Gold

Wonders would only be efficient to rush because they allow 4/5 gold cities to work on it (then they become just as good as one hammer city... of course ideally the Wonder is in a hammer city and 4/5 Gold cities mean you can rush it half way through)

Slavery would be the exception (I really think the 'pop rushing like chop rushing' would make it better) so it would still get the bonuses just like chop rushing does.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Well that still requires Fully developed Towns and Free Speech, and all the Gold buildings, (which implies a long period of development which means you probably have the buildings already)

and also hammers are more efficient at something that becomes important later on, ie Projects
so for Space Race, Hammers would still be necessary in at least a few cities
and for a Cultural Win, you aren't using Gold anyways


Perhaps the easiest thing might be eliminate the 'production bonus' effect for gold rushing. Powered Factories, Special Wonder resources, Organized Religion, Leader Bonuses, Heroic Epic, Dry Docks, etc. all help you build with Hammers but Don't help you with Gold

which would mean
1 commerce=2 gold=2/X hammers for stuff

1 hammer=2 hammers for stuff (in most cities with Factories)

So X just has to be the Town Commerce / Workshop extra hammers ratio, which is exactly 3.5 (but 3 rounds off nicer)
making them Slightly better (Town would still have an equivalent of 3.3333 hammers, but that would require the full production... perhaps if it was 4 then Towns would have an equivalent of 2.75 hammers, unless you were financial then it would be exactly 3)

So Eliminate the Bonus effect entirely and make the conversion 4

and then put in the increased cost for Wonders, National Wonders, and Units

Since those are the things hammers are focused on... contributions to your empire as a whole as opposed to local improvements, which US allows gold to take care of (essentially it 'brings your cities up to standard' quicker)

So Iron Works, Heroic Epic cities are still best with lots of Hammers of their own rather than relying on neighboring cities with Gold

Wonders would only be efficient to rush because they allow 4/5 gold cities to work on it (then they become just as good as one hammer city... of course ideally the Wonder is in a hammer city and 4/5 Gold cities mean you can rush it half way through)

Slavery would be the exception (I really think the 'pop rushing like chop rushing' would make it better) so it would still get the bonuses just like chop rushing does.

Our ideas are actually not that dissimilar. Where you talk about a factor of 4, I would use a factor of 5 and give the Kremlin a 25% bonus (with the Kremlin and the financial trait, towns will be equal in production to mines/workshops/lumbermills, but a lot more flexible in use). These numbers are not that different. I would also use a more crucial technology that makes the Kremlin go obsolete than the present technology.

I personally think that the advantage of gold, its flexibility, is a lot more powerful than the disadvantage of gold, its development time. The reason for this opinion is that the development time is something that has already occurred in the earlier stages of the game. You could argue that it would be a real disadvantage for newly captured cities which miss some gold increasing buildings and might have lost some of their full grown towns. However, in this case, the advantage of flexible use can be used to its full potential. Namely to rush these cities up to speed.

I do think that it should be possible to rush cities up to speed, but it should cost you and not be an effective strategy from an economical point of view.

Our ideas on the exact hurry factors might differ slightly, but they are a lot more different from the values that Firaxis has implemented (we make it about three times as expensive when all bonuses apply). I wonder if they ever used some basic calculations like DavidesJ first did in this thread. It would be one of the first things I did when I would implement a hurry function in a game. When you implement it in the game, then you know all the factors that influence it (production and gold bonuses and Kremlin..) and it should be pretty easy to do such a basic calculation.
I'm not a programmer, so maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe they didn't realize some factor that would influence it like the production bonuses. But that wouldn't be very commendable either.

Ah, mistakes are made. It's good that we can mod these out of the game easily.

 

[Zombie69]

I can see that they're not going to fix major balance issues in a patch.

Why not? Blizzard does it all the time, and this is part of why i consider them to be the single best gaming company in the world. Their model works and is highly profitable. Why can't Firaxis do the same?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Why not? Blizzard does it all the time, and this is part of why i consider them to be the single best gaming company in the world. Their model works and is highly profitable. Why can't Firaxis do the same?

Just a bit of negativism from me.

Ok, let's be positive. They will change it in the next patch and that patch will be available within just one hour. It will make the game perfectly balanced and it will have no more bugs for any player out there. Yes, I feel all positive now... wonder how long this lasts... maybe an hour...



Disclaimer: I think that Civ4 is a very good game and this unbalancing part of the cash rushing doesn't bug me much. I can easily mod it. I would just like to see a perfectly balanced vanilla game for every player out there.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Our ideas are actually not that dissimilar. Where you talk about a factor of 4, I would use a factor of 5 and give the Kremlin a 25% bonus (with the Kremlin and the financial trait, towns will be equal in production to mines/workshops/lumbermills, but a lot more flexible in use). These numbers are not that different. I would also use a more crucial technology that makes the Kremlin go obsolete than the present technology.

I personally think that the advantage of gold, its flexibility, is a lot more powerful than the disadvantage of gold, its development time. The reason for this opinion is that the development time is something that has already occurred in the earlier stages of the game. You could argue that it would be a real disadvantage for newly captured cities which miss some gold increasing buildings and might have lost some of their full grown towns. However, in this case, the advantage of flexible use can be used to its full potential. Namely to rush these cities up to speed.

I do think that it should be possible to rush cities up to speed, but it should cost you and not be an effective strategy from an economical point of view.

Our ideas on the exact hurry factors might differ slightly, but they are a lot more different from the values that Firaxis has implemented (we make it about three times as expensive when all bonuses apply). I wonder if they ever used some basic calculations like DavidesJ first did in this thread. It would be one of the first things I did when I would implement a hurry function in a game. When you implement it in the game, then you know all the factors that influence it (production and gold bonuses and Kremlin..) and it should be pretty easy to do such a basic calculation.
I'm not a programmer, so maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe they didn't realize some factor that would influence it like the production bonuses. But that wouldn't be very commendable either.

Ah, mistakes are made. It's good that we can mod these out of the game easily.

Actually I think what they did is figure on a basic conversion from gold to hammers (3:1), and then apply that both to upgrades and rushing [for upgrades it seems fine, for rushing.... not so much

Actually, to make the Kremlin even better balanced and fit with its position, perhaps instead of Reducing Rush costs, it
Allows Cash Rushing under any Government
AND/OR
Remove all or some of the penalties for Cash Rushing Wonders/Just started buildings, etc. (so there is a flat fee)

That Way the Kremlin doesn't become as much of a Factor in the Overall balancing of the Rushing.

I personally think that 4 works well because that means that for a Financial Leader, Towns are output equal to Workshops in all normal rushing cases (which they should be for a Financial Leader). Wheras for a non-Financial Leader it would be slightly in favor of Workshops (if a City has all of its improvements, and isn't going to be pumping military Then you would prefer Towns to help with other cities... but that's the case for any conversion rate).

I have to admit that even though I tend to run US governments I tend not to take full advantage of the Rushing ... I like to keep a high science rate, and play on larger maps, making the micromanagement involved in rushing annoying.

Perhaps if you could set a city on 'auto rush' ie rush as soon as you have one turns production for whatever you are building (if there are sufficient funds available), that flexibility would be grasped much more (and would make rushing much more fun even with the higher prices). So a US conqueror could take a city, load up the 'introductory queue' and put it on 'auto rush'

'auto upgrade' might also be useful, as a standing order to military units that would upgrade as soon as the cash became available (so you don't have to run 0% science for a few turns to make sure you get them all at once, or worry about tracking them down. Issue the Alt-order once, make sure you are running a surplus and it gets done when it gets done)

 

[Roland Johansen]

I like your ideas for the Kremlin. It would indeed make it less of a factor in balancing the gold rushing and the advantages are unique and useful. Good thinking!

About the auto-features. I can see that some people would like them, but I would like to balance rushing in such a way that it would be the exception and not the rule in improving your cities. So that wouldn't work for me. But if you balance it like you're suggesting, then I can see that rushing would be used a lot more and that an auto-feature would be useful on the larger maps.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

It looks like there is another bug mixed in with all this as well. If you have a production bonus (org. rel, bureaucracy, forge, etc.), then pop rushing becomes quite "exploitable", even on normal speed.

When a city is running Org. Rel., if you rush a building when you need 1-29 hammers, you get 30 hammers at a cost of 1 pop. But if you rush it when you need 30-37 hammers, you get 60 hammers and still only lose 1 pop.

This bug could be exploited much more often than the previous one we were discussing (the epic speed 60 vs. 30 hammer bug).

 

[Dusty Monkey]

It seems to me that this is not 'unbalanced'

Unbalanced would be if only a minority of leaders had the traits necessary to get this advantage. It seems to me that no combination of leader traits makes cash rushing a poor play in the late game.

Clearly cash rushing has its advantages and that to be considered highly productive in the late game you will need to be fluent in cash rushing. This of course leads to the cottage-everything strategy. I see this as no different than the irrigate-everything strategy for Great People Farms. In both cases there is a single play which dominates all the others.

I see cash rushing as a tactic rather than a strategy. Its a specific move you can make that happens to be a strong one. The same can be said for building a worker on Turn 1 (often a VERY strong move), or trading Philosophy for every tech the A.I's have.

Can you elliminate all the strong moves?

 

[Roland Johansen]

It has nothing to do with a strong move. It has to do with a strategy that dominates all others in the late game and makes hammer production unimportant in the late game (except in a few cities that produce projects which cannot be rushed). Therefore it removes a lot of strategy from the late game, because one strategy dominates all others.
If you think that the irrigate everything strategy is a strong one for every city, then you're mistaken. It has been mathematically proven that cottages produce more commerce and thus science than scientists + representation bonus. And the few great scientists aren't going to help enough to balance it out. Irrigate everything is useful for one city, your great person factory. Thus it will not eliminate any other strategies from the game.
The same can be said for building a worker on turn 1. It is not always the best thing to do and it will not eliminate any other strategies from the game. Cash rushing is the way to go from the moment that universal suffrage is available as a civic until you win the game.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It looks like there is another bug mixed in with all this as well. If you have a production bonus (org. rel, bureaucracy, forge, etc.), then pop rushing becomes quite "exploitable", even on normal speed.

When a city is running Org. Rel., if you rush a building when you need 1-29 hammers, you get 30 hammers at a cost of 1 pop. But if you rush it when you need 30-37 hammers, you get 60 hammers and still only lose 1 pop.

This bug could be exploited much more often than the previous one we were discussing (the epic speed 60 vs. 30 hammer bug).

If you understand the nature of the bug (which I think you do), then it is logical that it works this way, but it is very bad. I agree.

 

[Karnor]

There are a number of points being overlooked in the commerce vs hammer arguments

- Universal suffrage is required. This makes it a mid-late game strategy without the pyramids. And only one player can get the pyramids.

- Many other improvements are also needed to make it efficient, particularly free speech, again making it a mid-late game strategy (even with the pyramids).

- Given that it is a mid-late game strategy, normal boring hammers are going to be needed for earlier in the game. Which then creates the question of how to switch between those boring hammers to the exciting towns. Town's aren't quick to build, something around 40 turns to get them up to full capacity, and thats with double growth speed. So ripping out the mines and replacing them with cottages is going to take a long time to pay off. Seems reasonable therefore to have a pay off at the end which actually makes it worthwhile.

- Towns are very vulnerable in war. With a few workers a pillaged mine can be replaced in a single turn. A pillaged town takes a long long time to be replaced.

- Late game a production town with ironworks or heroic epic can produce a tank in about a turn. In order to keep up with that output using gold, the 50% extra cost is unavoidable.

- Kremlin - once again its a wonder, so only 1 person can get it.

So sure, towns are great late game, but you cant ignore the cost of getting from an early game balanced strategy to mass towns late game.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It is known that towns take a time to grow (35 turns with emancipation, a civic that is difficult to avoid in the late game) and that universal suffrage (and free speech) is needed. In my last post and in some previous posts, I mentioned that it was a mid to late game tactic. I can't see the relevance of that remark. Of course cash rushing can only be overpowered when it is available and for that you need universal suffrage. The Kremlin is not needed to make cash rushing overpowered, it just aggravates the effect.

The problem is that without a very serious war where war weariness becomes a huge problem (like +10 unhappiness even with the -50% reduction of prisons and Mount Rushmore), it is the one best way to go. It means that the choice between which terrain improvement to use on a tile becomes trivial when the option of a cottage is available. You don't want any hammer improving terrain improvements except in the few production cities that are needed for projects that can't be rushed. It actually removes one of the three resources food, production, commerce as a viable option from the game.

Another problem is that cash rushing a new unit is often cheaper than upgrading an old unit which is rather strange.

Note that with universal suffrage and free speech, you don't need full grown towns before cash rushing is more efficient than mines/lumbermills/workshops. A village (which only takes 15 turns to grow) is already more efficient for production than a mine/lumbermill/workshop. And the commerce can of course be used much more flexible than the production could be used. When the village becomes a town, then it is really overpowered.

By the way, I see that I forgot to welcome two new members to the Civfanatics forum.

Welcome to the Civfanatics forum Dusty Monkey and Karnor.

 

[Dusty Monkey]

Roland I believe you are not seeing the forest for the tree's.

For instance you explain the reasons that you still need hammers (projects) and then immediately proceed to say that hammers arent a resource that needs to be developed in the late game. I believe it is an exageration that developing hammers are not necessary in the late game and that you were right the first time, that you still need hammers.

Further, unless you are running a large gold surplus while 100% spending, cash rushing requires a science and/or culture sacrifice. If there is any problem with cash rushing at all, it stems from the fact that it IS possible to produce an abundance of otherwise useless gold while "100% spending." I'm all for a debate on that issue specifically.

Also, my comment about irrigating everything had a GPP context which you didnt acknowledge. Irrigating everything is the best way to set up a GPP city. Its the best move and that, all by itself, doesnt make irrigation or anything else unbalanced.