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[Gort]

Gort:

It's important to keep in mind that Barre's bonus isn't +10% Faster Growth. It's actually +10% Food. Those are not the same thing. You can use the advantage for Faster Growth, but you can actually also use it for More Production. It's a bit like the Refugees thing. Refugees isn't just faster growth. You can also leverage the extra food into more production, more Energy, or more Science; without requiring bigger cities.

Given the way that Food Surplus boosts Food TR, and the Agricultural Development mechanic, Barre's bonus is actually a fairly dangerous one already. It's just that no one's yet leveraged it and made a big deal out of it. It wouldn't take much to really make it take off.

 

[Roxlimn]

Please think about it a little bit harder.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Yep, +10% growth.

 

[Paszczak]

Maritime City States Trade Route are so overpowered! I can ignore most buldings in the game and still get huge yields in city tiles.

Buildings and wonders are so bad! I'm just spamming Settlers Colonists and build Military Units Trade Routes in every city.

Global Happiness Health is supposed to stop me from over expanding, but it doesn't work! I can just ignore it and spam cities anyway.

Blah blah blah.

Stop playing this game and wait for an expansion. Small patch isn't going to fix anything.

 

[sprang]

It's important to keep in mind that Barre's bonus isn't +10% Faster Growth. It's actually +10% Food. Those are not the same thing. You can use the advantage for Faster Growth, but you can actually also use it for More Production. It's a bit like the Refugees thing. Refugees isn't just faster growth. You can also leverage the extra food into more production, more Energy, or more Science; without requiring bigger cities.

Well, yes... but...
Avg Capital in early game is on a 3F tile. If you have a 4F resource and another 3F tile, you have 10 food, with a 6F surplus. Barre's bonus gives you one extra food, 7F. That's 16% faster growth here. Typically, it's about this time you start using 2F tiles to maintain growth, and those tiles may not be great. 2F, 1E on a river, or some farmed plains at 2F 1P.

You could choose to work a 1F tile instead, but there aren't ANY 1F 2P non-resource tiles. Those used to be called "forests", but alien forests evidently just suck. The alternative to the plains farm is perhaps a plains generator, at 1F, 1P, 2E, but 2E isn't anything spectacular. What you'd really like is a mine, but you've only got ONE extra food from Barre's bonus, so that 0F 3P mine will mean slower growth.

Interesting question though....
If refugees gives you 2F, and that gives you a mine at 0F,3P, does that mean that Refugees should outperform Engineers?

 

[Monthar]

The +10% food is applied only to the surplus, so 10 food with 6 surplus would only give an extra 0.6 food for 6.6 per turn towards the next pop not 7. You can clearly see this in Gort's screenshot. He has 4 food, 2 eaten leaving 2 base (pre-multiplier amount used for growth) plus the 10% bonus bringing the total available for growth to 2.2 food per turn.

 

[sprang]

The +10% food is applied only to the surplus, so 10 food with 6 surplus would only give an extra 0.6 food for 6.6 per turn towards the next pop not 7. You can clearly see this in Gort's screenshot. He has 4 food, 2 eaten leaving 2 base (pre-multiplier amount used for growth) plus the 10% bonus bringing the total available for growth to 2.2 food per turn.

Dear god, that's lame.

My mistake. Glad I never bothered trying to play Barre.

 

[Roxlimn]

The interesting thing is how it interacts with Trade Route values and Agricultural Development.

Well, yes... but...
Avg Capital in early game is on a 3F tile. If you have a 4F resource and another 3F tile, you have 10 food, with a 6F surplus. Barre's bonus gives you one extra food, 7F. That's 16% faster growth here. Typically, it's about this time you start using 2F tiles to maintain growth, and those tiles may not be great. 2F, 1E on a river, or some farmed plains at 2F 1P.

You could choose to work a 1F tile instead, but there aren't ANY 1F 2P non-resource tiles. Those used to be called "forests", but alien forests evidently just suck. The alternative to the plains farm is perhaps a plains generator, at 1F, 1P, 2E, but 2E isn't anything spectacular. What you'd really like is a mine, but you've only got ONE extra food from Barre's bonus, so that 0F 3P mine will mean slower growth.

Lots of things being assumed here. Barre's bonus is kind of crap in the start of the game. As Gort's screenshot shows, it only yields 0.2 food when you have literally nothing but a size 1 city. It's not a very good early-game ability. But it's also not +10% Growth. This latter ability is far more limited.

Interesting question though....
If refugees gives you 2F, and that gives you a mine at 0F,3P, does that mean that Refugees should outperform Engineers?

I've found Refugees to be a remarkably flexible bonus. More people could stand to use them better, but since they require more thought than literally nothing, most people just don't optimize them very much.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

It's not a very good early-game ability. But it's also not +10% Growth.

I request a dissertation on the difference between +10% Growth and +10% surplus food. With examples and screenshots, please. If you do not provide it, then you are obviously wrong.

 

[Roxlimn]

Honestly, I could be. It depends on whether the 10% surplus is factored into the TR calculation. If it is, then the 10% goes into the differentials and is multiplied by however many TRs are coming in - similar to how hammers are multiplied by the TRs. Moreover, it'll get spiked even more by AgriDev.

If the added food isn't going into the differentials, then it really is just +10% Growth and sorely needs the patch.

 

[Pietato]

It's cyclical. All of this and all the hand-wringing happened in Civ5 as well, and I truly think no small amount of players just huffed and tromped their way back to Civ4 when it was clear that Firaxis wasn't interested in just remaking Civ4 in hex grid. Many of those same people still get on here and there from time to time (see: 1UPT thread).

What's remarkable about Firaxis is that they actually insist on creating new games with new sensibilities and new mechanics and new ideas despite all this backlash from the fans. At heart, a lot of people just don't want new things. They want the old things with new graphics (see: Madden. see: Call of Duty see: every CivFanatics thread saying new games should be like the old ones).

Eventually, we'll come upon a new balance and new interesting things in CivBE, or so I hope; just like Tall vs. Wide emerged in Civ5. Civ5 now is remarkably different from what it was on release. But that wasn't done on its own. A lot of player feedback allowed that to happen. We have to talk about new balances and new ways of playing or Firaxis won't have the feedback they need to finalize CivBE.

It is not that the game is different that people are complaining. It is because it an unbalanced early beta.

 

[Xenotitan]

Well, not everyone is complaining about the same things. Some people are bothered most by all the bugs. Some people complain that some things are unbalanced. Some people complain that the game isn't different enough, that it is a Civ V reskin. Some people complain about Civ V features that didn't make it into the game.

And while it is possible that the root cause of some of the complaints are that things are different, I'm not going to accuse people of not liking the game because it's different unless that's what they are actually saying.

Also, on a unrelated note, if city A produces x food and city B produces y food, then x - y is the difference, not the differential.

I'm off to do some testing to see what gets increased by that 10%.

 

[Xenotitan]

I did a quick test and the 10% turns a 4 food trade route into 4.4. I doubt that it affects the difference going into the trade route calculations because then it would increase the trade route yields twice. Also, Alpaca's thread on trade route yields says that percentage modifiers don't change the trade route yield. The 10% does boost the return from agricultural development as expected.

 

[Roxlimn]

Not as good as I thought, then. If it's not going into the TR calculations, then it's functionally just +10% Growth.

And while it is possible that the root cause of some of the complaints are that things are different, I'm not going to accuse people of not liking the game because it's different unless that's what they are actually saying.

When people say, "This part of the game sucks. Let's make it closer to how Civ X/SMAC does it," then I think that that's exactly what they're saying.

 

[m15a]

Also, on a unrelated note, if city A produces x food and city B produces y food, then x - y is the difference, not the differential.

I was just skimming the thread, but this caught my eye: "differential" is a synonym of "difference".

 

[Pietato]

Not as good as I thought, then. If it's not going into the TR calculations, then it's functionally just +10% Growth.

When people say, "This part of the game sucks. Let's make it closer to how Civ X/SMAC does it," then I think that that's exactly what they're saying.

You really are the fox news of these forums...

Moderator Action: Please make your point without name calling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Light Cleric]

When people say, "This part of the game sucks. Let's make it closer to how Civ X/SMAC does it," then I think that that's exactly what they're saying.

People can dislike something because it sucks and just happens to be different. If they think one of the previous games did it better then they should argue for it.

I have to agree with the other posters; the lengths you've been going to in this thread to distort people's arguments and dismiss people as uninformed, a minority etc. is really painful to watch.

Moderator Action: Please cease the personal and get back to the discussion.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Roxlimn]

I don't target people. If I see something that seems incorrect, I engage with it. If that happens to be you saying it, that's not personal. If it turns out to actually be incorrect, that is so very much not my fault.

I happen to think, as a personal opinion, that the series should move forward. That will inevitably lead to things that suck. That's how progress is made. It is extremely rare for a new thing to get it right the first time. The first guns were godawful. If you happen to think otherwise, then I don't see how it's a distortion to simply refer to that for what it is - a desire to revert to previous games, at the expense of progress and innovation. It is not so very rare for people to be against innovative things. In fact, it is very common.

 

[AgentDib]

If a poster prefers the game mechanics in Civ:BE to that of previous titles then they are the fortunate ones. It would be terrific if the core problem was that BE was too different for people to appreciate that the mechanics were actually good. The mechanics stand on their own, however, and degree of similarity isn't germane to how effective they are.

The real problem is that BE is too similar to CiV vanilla; limited features, limited UI and poor balance. And where CiV had other benefits over Civ4 such as a new graphics engine, BE doesn't yet sell the sci-fi theme hard enough to put up with the rest.

 

[Acken]

When people say, "This part of the game sucks. Let's make it closer to how Civ X/SMAC does it," then I think that that's exactly what they're saying.

No. You're just making a shortcut to label it as such so that you can dismiss the idea for not being innovative or just being from someone that doesn't like change.

When people think something is awful they will often compare to something that is better done elsewhere. That doesn't mean they hate it only because it's different. They hate it because it's awful to begin with. The solution proposed is just a quick solution to the problem from past experiences. Nobody here complains about the parts of the game that are actually done right just because they are different.