The OpenDev/Preview Thread

[CivLuvah]

Another interesting observation: If the stability is too low, an established city can be turned into an Independent People-controlled city.

Below is a city initially founded by Hittites, being conquered by Teutons around late Medieval, and then flipped into independence:

Spoiler :

View attachment 578921

One turn later I dumped all my money into them and assimilated the whole region into my empire.

This is what I wanted in the *ahem* other game, when it comes to rebel cities due to instability. Good to know this is the case in this game.

 

[TreVor_ish]

Another interesting observation: If the stability is too low, an established city can be turned into an Independent People-controlled city.

Below is a city initially founded by Hittites, being conquered by Teutons around late Medieval, and then flipped into independence:

Spoiler :

View attachment 578921

One turn later I dumped all my money into them and assimilated the whole region into my empire.

Yeah, this money dumping on independent cities is also a little unbalanced. Not only it has too low of a threshold, it's also a click fiesta - usually by the medieval, it's easy to buy out independent region.
Another thing about stability before turning into independent, rebels spawn near the city, and then when conquered by them, it becomes independent.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Yeah, this money dumping on independent cities is also a little unbalanced. Not only it has too low of a threshold, it's also a click fiesta - usually by the medieval, it's easy to buy out independent region.

Yeah, the Gold income is heavily overflowing by Medieval, I have a 10k income once when playing a full Merchant run.

Another thing about stability before turning into independent, rebels spawn near the city, and then when conquered by them, it becomes independent.

I have also got rebels from other cultures wandering into my territory and try to pillage my luxuries.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I have also got rebels from other cultures wandering into my territory and try to pillage my luxuries.

- And miscellaneous Independent Peoples' wandering through your territory as early as the Classical Era attacking your units and outposts, and pillaging to their little digital hearts' content. Even if you have non-aggression pacts/peace treaties with all your other Major Faction neighbors on the continent, the early game is never completely peaceful . . .

 

[Sostratus]

I have also got rebels from other cultures wandering into my territory and try to pillage my luxuries.

And miscellaneous Independent Peoples' wandering through your territory as early as the Classical Era attacking your units and outposts, and pillaging to their little digital hearts' content. Even if you have non-aggression pacts/peace treaties with all your other Major Faction neighbors on the continent, the early game is never completely peaceful . . .

I experienced this for the first time today with a merry band of Visigoths strolling through. I really like that dynamism that it captures - I have pretty much made my only real neighbor peaceful, but there's always reasons to divert pops to the military.

Side note: clearly, Rome would never have fallen if they simply had mounted crossbows onto elephants. I'm not sure how these Khmer UUs are balanced, they absolutely shred. Can't wait to get those Siamese machine gun elephants...

~~~~~
I didn't realize this but machu picchu doesn't redistribute food, it gives 50% of the cities food as a bonus to every single city. I didn't realize this and now all my cities have +300 food income from the wonder.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I didn't realize this but machu picchu doesn't redistribute food, it gives 50% of the cities food as a bonus to every single city. I didn't realize this and now all my cities have +300 food income from the wonder.

Little known fact: the entire mountain under Machu Picchu is hollowed out into one big honking Granary which is connected by underground railway to every flipping city in South America. Strange that we never got that in any other game, even the science fiction ones . . .

 

[8housesofelixir]

Even if you have non-aggression pacts/peace treaties with all your other Major Faction neighbors on the continent, the early game is never completely peaceful . . .

By this design, you can choose a Militarist culture and having peace treaties with everyone AND still earning Militarist Fames, as killing IP units also count into Militarist Fame.

It is a nice way to earn Fame, although it probably doesn't have a nice implication when some IPs are named after all kinds of native peoples.

 

[Sostratus]

I really enjoy the city management, but I probably should not be able to do this:

Spoiler I am but a humble Servant of Magnificence :

This is no where even close to what you could do, but I wanted to have some aesthetic considerations.
(I joined a city with it a few turns before, but even before the join my 2 territory capital had 8k something production.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think what cities really need is some kind of carrying capacity factor. You can generate infinite of all yields with just production - don't need pops at all except to get more yields. To curb infinite exponential growth, i think it would be okay if the pops grow right up to a point and then stop until you expand the carrying capacity. That way at different points in the game, you would have some cities that are "capped" and you'd want to find outlets for that excess population. This could loosely be like civ's housing, but perhaps something like:

• Housing from Main Plaza & Administrative centers
• Housing from those resource improving quarters
• Housing from exploitations
• Housing from Hamlets

This way, when your cities are small, you get a lot of carrying capacity from accessing exploitations.
As you start expanding, the ratio of your district carpet to the exploitations will shrink, and eventually you'll need to start putting down hamlets / some truly urban quarter to sustain population growth. This should encourage forming A city center agglomeration, with little "islands" of settlement provided by hamlets, resource deposits, and harbors. Eventually, as you get carry capacity from districts, you can start urbanizing more and more. Hamlets are uniquely the only quarter that adds Four job slots, which I love, and hope its expanded on more.
Somehow tying this to a mechanism to stop you from just urbanizing anyways and having 0 pops but no natural land left, would also be needed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Total shower thought: it would be super cool if there were "advanced" versions of some quarters that could only be built on an existing quarter. So, as an example, a Makers' Quarter might be upgraded to an Industrial Park (you'd literally build it on top of the maker's quarter) which would then make it unable to exploit yields, but it would have stronger innate output. Say, an extra worker slot and broader adjacency, or something. That adds an entire new (optional) dimension to urban planning with only some graphical overhead that fits mostly into the same game systems. Hamlets could become some kind of Downtown or whatever, IDK. You probably get the idea.

 

[8housesofelixir]

To curb infinite exponential growth, i think it would be okay if the pops grow right up to a point and then stop until you expand the carrying capacity.

If hovering your mouse over the population number of any city's information panel, you can see that every city actually has a population cap, written as a tooltip. Seems an unimplemented system, similar to the quarter cap in Stadia Opendev (which being removed in the current Opendev).

IIRC this cap is tied to quarters and attached territories, the territorially larger your city is the bigger the cap.

Edit: The Stadia Opendev also had a huge stability penalty of overpopulation in order to discourage the uncontrollable growth, but it is removed in Lucy Opendev as well.

• Housing from Main Plaza & Administrative centers

• Housing from those resource improving quarters

• Housing from exploitations

• Housing from Hamlets

Really like the idea. Housing mechanism is one of the few things I generally love and fairly realistic in Civ, whereas in Humankind some of the cities can established in a place without seawater nor freshwater.

 

[Sostratus]

IIRC this cap is tied to quarters and attached territories, the territorially larger your city is the bigger the cap.

Edit: The Stadia Opendev also had a huge stability penalty of overpopulation in order to discourage the uncontrollable growth, but it is removed in Lucy Opendev as well.

I see what they are doing with stability as a soft limiter, but I think pops and yields are just too split apart right now.

I think I would be happier if they could shift a lot of the “makers quarters +1 with other makers quarters” towards “+1 from worker jobs.” Or even +2 or something, but it’s specifically the huge number of self adjacency effects makers get that other districts don’t. A makers quarter gives exactly 1 worker, so you can have far better control over what a player can do if you have the furnace line only give a flat +1 to MQs and compensate by making the worker boosting buildings give +2 each or something.

Things like the Jama Masjid would be far more workable if they simply unlocked +2 per worker as a bonus for the city itself (it would be like a building effect as long as the city possessed at least one,) and then had some other adjacency aspect. That way you wouldn’t have exponential scaling, these would be essentially uniques, but you could still build a few if you wanted. For example, the Egyptian pyramid gives influence per adjacent MQ. No reason the Jama can’t do something like that.

 

[Elhoim]

that the entire game (8 Eras) can be finished in less than 300 turns.

6 eras

 

[Atlas627]

I think having separate tile yield and population yield systems are something that will make this more interesting than Civ, where Food > everything because Food -> everything via population. Right now, Food results in Pop, and that has a cap but is also used for military. Production/Gold results in quarters, which cares about the map and costs stability.

Tying quarters to population takes out all the nuance.

So for the most part, the yields are just begetting more yields. BUT more yields means faster Era Stars and thus more score and thus victory, *without even requiring a snowball gameplay loop of yields -> more yields*! So the game can afford to make new things cost more than you recoup by building them, because having the higher income is still worth score. So they can simply tweak the numbers until diminishing returns make you consider either where your current competitive advantage is (and use it to set you up for later score) or where you can gain the most score now by boosting your weaknesses (so, spamming 1 quarter would lose its oomph naturally).

I hope this point of diminishing returns is immediate early on, and gets harder to reach as you continue the game, so that the early game and late game actually feel different. Early game: pick the right region and settle in exactly the right spot. Late game: urban sprawl

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

6 eras

This is what comes of trying to work on 4 major projects at once: Perfect Historical 4X Game, learning Humankind, a database on Neolithic cultures, settlements and technologies, and writing a book on the Battle of Moscow - oh, yeah, and Christmas mixed in there too. My apologies to all for any possible confusions.

 

[Elhoim]

This is what comes of trying to work on 4 major projects at once: Perfect Historical 4X Game, learning Humankind, a database on Neolithic cultures, settlements and technologies, and writing a book on the Battle of Moscow - oh, yeah, and Christmas mixed in there too. My apologies to all for any possible confusions.

And enlightening the unwashed civfanatic masses about history!

But yeah, having 4 out 6 eras completed in under 150 turns when the goal is 300 is too fast.

 

[CivLuvah]

Just an update on my game:

So the two empires who share the southern half of the empire with me: now the Romans and the Celts in the Classical age, are threatening war with me. The Romans were once weak relative to me, with the relationship described as "Appeasing", but now they have a stronger military than me, and were not afraid to give demands. The Celts, meanwhile, to my east, are still a pain in the butt, and they got more than three-quarters of my territory. Weirdly enough, a band of Celtic rebels eliminated my city in between my capital and my other city, and made it their own. I've just made a new city from an outpost I established in the north, and I hope this becomes my new capital.

I have never felt this close to giving up and starting a new game in *ahem* the other game. The last time I was this worried in a 4X game was Civ4.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Side note: clearly, Rome would never have fallen if they simply had mounted crossbows onto elephants. I'm not sure how these Khmer UUs are balanced, they absolutely shred. Can't wait to get those Siamese machine gun elephants...

Historical Trivia Time: The Romans had a sort of version of that: the carroballista, a small bolt-throwing catapult mounted on a mule cart so it could keep up with the marching legions as a 'heavy weapon' - fired 1 cubit iron headed bolts (the cubit was 440 to 550mm depending on when and where you're measuring: the cubit as a unit of measurement was already 3000 years old when the Romans used it!). Not a gatling gun, surely, but the heavy bolts could perforate any human, horse or larger target through any armor you could wear and still move in.

And enlightening the unwashed civfanatic masses about history! .

I'm pretty sure at least a few of them wash - at least I hope so since most of us have been cooped up inside for most of this year!

 

[Sostratus]

Can anyone explain to me what the "ongoing trade" type bonuses are? You'll see buildings like a customs house or whatever that bonuses for ongoing trade, i think there's a civic choice that gives a bonus science for each trade route or something. What is this system? It is extremely opaque to me after 3-4 runs through the scenario.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Can anyone explain to me what the "ongoing trade" type bonuses are? You'll see buildings like a customs house or whatever that bonuses for ongoing trade, i think there's a civic choice that gives a bonus science for each trade route or something. What is this system? It is extremely opaque to me after 3-4 runs through the scenario.

The "bonuses for ongoing trade" is basically "bonuses per trade route passing thought this territory"; you can image it as a tariff. IIRC, any trade routes - whether trade routes created by others buying from you, or trade routes created by you buying from others - can receive the bonus.

Currently, there are 3 buildings having this bonus: The Medieval Infrastructure "Great Fishmarket", which gives +5 money per naval trade route; the Ghanaian EQ "Luxuries Market" which gives +1 money per trade route; the Dutch EQ "V.O.C. Warehouse", which also gives +5 money per naval trade route.

The civic choice that gives +2 science per trade route should work in a similar way.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Same energy: The Humankind Franks EQ, Scriptorium, has an adjacency bonus similar to Civ VI Spanish UI, Mission. Both uniques have a science adjacency bonus when next to a holy site/religious quarter.

Spoiler :

Humankind Spanish EQ has a similar adjacency bonus as well - having bonus faith instead of science when next to a holy site.

 

[Sostratus]

The "bonuses for ongoing trade" is basically "bonuses per trade route passing thought this territory"; you can image it as a tariff. IIRC, any trade routes - whether trade routes created by others buying from you, or trade routes created by you buying from others - can receive the bonus.

What are the start and end points of the trade routes when i buy resources? (Is there much ability to create a real trade hub, in other words.)