Why does this game punishes expansionism so much?

[WeaselSlapper]

And i dont know if it just me,but trading with other civs is not working,i ask for ONE resource and they want THREE + money O_O

While trading make sure you're only asking for luxuries that they AI has at least two of. If the trade screen only shows one then they will be less likely to trade it because that's the only one they have and if they trade it they won't have one for themselves. Normally if you're friendly with a civ and they have surplus they will gladly trade resources on a 1 to 1 basis with you.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

+9 for starting happiness, for a base 84 happiness.

Starting happiness varies by difficulity

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I also manage my overall expansion more carefully in Civ 5... I don't build Settler after Settler in the early game in a land-grab like I used to. I usually get 3 or maybe 4 cities up and running and then chill for a while, improving tiles, adding buildings, connecting trade routes, accumulating (and spending) culture, gaining city-state influence for more luxuries, trading with the AI for cash or more luxuries, etc. After those initial 3-4 cities are doing well, I add a couple more and repeat the process.

Even in Civ 4 early expansion had to be managed very carefully because maintenance would kill you. On the higher difficulty if you build more then 4-5 cities before courthouses and marketplaces your economy and science would almost defiantly sink. The last Civ game that was a early land grab was Civ 3. In that game I used to always get my first 5-10 settlers out as quickly as I could. The only thing that stopped me was the other players.

Personally I think the only thing that should stop me from early expansion is the other players. If I focus on land grabbing early my military is going to be weak and all my cities will be small and all the production I spent on settlers meant that I never got any of the early wonders. There were also plenty of times where my early land grabbing allowed an AI who developed early military to steamroll me and wipe me out. I greatly prefer this to artificial mechanics (like happiness and corruption) that force me to only expand at the pace the developers think is appropriate.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

And i dont know if it just me,but trading with other civs is not working,i ask for ONE resource and they want THREE + money O_O

I hope this gets fixed.

Trading resources with other Civs is largely useless at the moment because as far as I can see the AI rarely accepts any reasonable or relatively fair trade offers.

EDIT: Also, WeaselSlapper there is this magical little thing called the edit button.

 

[SuperJay]

I hope this gets fixed.

I don't think it's broken. If you don't ask for their only source of Furs, Wine, Sugar, etc, they're not really that unreasonable (in my experience) unless they have good reason to be.

 

[Xzylvador]

Weird, I've often had simple 1 for 1 deals with the AI... just don't ever ask them for their single source of resources, then they'll ask a 5:1 deal.
Never had any really beneficial deals with the AI though, not sure if that's even possible.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I hope this gets fixed.

Trading resources with other Civs is largely useless at the moment because as far as I can see the AI rarely accepts any reasonable or relatively fair trade offers.

EDIT: Also, WeaselSlapper there is this magical little thing called the edit button.

If you read my first post you would have realized that the system is not broken, it works as intended.

I know there's an edit button I was just too lazy to go thought the process of quoting three different people in one response.

 

[django86]

Hey guys,thank you for all the replies.

 

[Theodorick]

Expansionism is not penalized as much as you're saying. You just need to learn the game some more.

There are a few obviously expansionist social policies you can adopt, such as Liberty, Piety, Commerce, and Order. Even Patronage can be an expansionist policy if you're using city states to their full advantage. Just pick your flavor based on your gameplay.

Don't ignore city states. Aggressively appease city states until you have a few allies. The bonuses you get, especially with Patronage, makes it much easier to maintain a large empire. If you're just running around and conquering city states instead, you're losing the bonuses they can give you, and just gaining unhappy conquered cities.

Balance your trade with other empires, so your people are always getting foreign resources. Build a strong economy so you can buy happiness buildings on a whim as well as maintain city state relations. Try and get the wonders that help with happiness, such as the Forbidden palace--one I always grab when I have a large empire.

If you pull it off, it's really easy to have an enormous empire actually. It took me a few plays to get things correct myself.

 

[django86]

^ lol easier said than done,man.

 

[Alex_K]

Perhaps Civ5 should have prerequisites to building settler units. Properly done this would reduce the danger of settler spamming and still allow for reasonable growth. I would think that restricting settler production according to happiness level would be fairly easy to implement and might improve the game.
The formula might look somewhat like: Happiness - (X * (settlers + settlers in production)) must be greater than 0 to allow a settler to be chosen for production. X varies based on difficulty and perhaps map size.

 

[aday]

And also,from a realism point of view,i dont see how having more cities would upset the population

Don't think of it as people being unhappy that there are more cities. Think of it as it being more difficult to keep all these outlying cities under your rule. It was no small feat back in antiquity! Supplying them with pretties and noms keeps them from rebelling.

 

[Ayt]

Make sure your trade networks are connecting all your cities as well. I was having a terrible time with unhappiness until I realized my city with the most luxury resources wasn't connected to anyone else...

It's worth it, too, to clear out the barb camps for some gold when you can, and use it to buy off city-states which have access to luxury resources.

This game doesn't work that way. You don't need your cities to be connected for the luxury to count towards your global happiness.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I think the biggest issue with expansion is that your cities can just grow to the global happiness limit without you even knowing it. The more cities the easier this is to do. Now you can overcome this, eventually, but the natural course of the game drives you into the dirt. The extremely slow production makes digging out of a hole tedious, and the AI hates cultural expansion into forests and hills, which would at least give you local sources of hammers.

Ironically enough, the "streamlining" has produced an important area of the game where you need relentless micromanagement to succeed. They really need to fix this.

I'd add the ability to direct natural city cultural growth (it's consistent with every other way we treat cities), shift the default AI a bit towards more hammers for baby cities, and make early production faster to make that part of the game less boring.

 

[MarkJohnson]

This game doesn't punish expansionism, it rewards more prior proper planning, which is why I still fail to see how anyone can call this game "dumbed down" compared to Civ 4, and do so with a straight face. In Civ 4 i could spam endless cities and build whatever I wanted in them with little or no thought as to the consequential effects on my empire as a whole...I can't do that in Civ 5, and to me, that's a definite improvement.

I find Civ V to be identical to Civ IV. All they seemed to do is change the way they were accomplished. I wouldn't call it dumbed down, but it is more simplified in some areas, and things added in others.

What I like the most is not having to mature cities. I build a trading post and I get the full amount. Game adjustments for gold are higher to offset this, but gold still works the same. No sliders to adjust the game, instead buildings have costs to force you to specialize your cities like you would on the highest levels of Civ IV and I think this is the best part of the game, it makes you think more, and plan ahead.

But find I can spam about the same in Civ IV if I manage things properly, and I needed to do the same for Civ IV. there was never success in spamming in Civ IV without a plan.

For me, when I am expanding quickly, I make friends with Maritime city states for extra food. I then don't need to build food buildings and focus on happiness buildings. and spamming trading posts to keep the city states happy. always trade for resouces when you can, and city states can provide them as well.

Don't forget scouts, they are very important to expose the map and finding city states early on. They are very powerful allies in the game and very much needed. As a general rule, never kill a city state!

 

[SJSerio]

I have to agree that the game is really against expansionists... whether through war or through peace. Yes, there are ways to increase happiness (not really crazy about the diplomatic route... or diplomacy, in general) but without good conditions, it can really cripple you. I was playing on warlord which provides 12 bonus happiness and can't imagine playing on any higher difficulties for expansion.

Throw war into it and the penalties almost make it pointless to attack anybody (or strike back after being attacked), which, to me, defeats the whole purpose of this version of CIV.\

Oh... and not to mention the crippling that expanding does toward social policies.

 

[spicytimothy]

A lot of generalized answers that doesn't apply so easily in actual gameplay, but I do agree that bottom line it's a decision but an error to make Civ5 as such.

I'm so used to having an empire that covers coast to coast on a continent, now even after I conquer the other civs I still need to either wait for a long time or build extra cities to grab land. Of coz I can just ignore that and suck it up, but then the AI from across the world comes over and plop down a settler right on ur continent :-/

 

[Pragmatic]

Starting happiness varies by difficulity

But 9 is the baseline starting happiness (at the highest difficulty levels).

 

[Becephalus]

Every Civ game has tried to reign in expansions since ICS was discovered. This was one of the huge early complaints about 3 and 4! People have no memories...

I have made 80% of my resources trades on a 1 for 1 basis.

If you are getting poor offers you are probably war mongering and people won't like you.

 

[migkillertwo]

This is one of the new things that i dont like.The expanding penalties in this game were clearly done to prevent settler spamming,which i agree is an annoying tactic,but imo it needs some re-balancing.

Its 500-600 a.c. in my game and im struggling to maintain my people happy with just 6 cities.Maybe i just still suck at playing the game,but i dont see how anyone would be able to go the expansionism way,unless you get extremely lucky with starting position,and natural wonders.Which only happened once to me.


And also,from a realism point of view,i dont see how having more cities would upset the population

I think they need to give us the option of founding puppet cities.