Why does this game punishes expansionism so much?

[Folket]

-3 in happiness is no problem if I were you I would continue to expand. Put your cities very close together to prevent them from growing and letting them fit more happiness buildings.

There is no cap on how many cities you can have but there is a cap on how many really large cities you can have, I have had 50-60 cities without any problem, must of them were around size 8.

I think the new system just works great. It is much more strategical then the system in civ 4.

 

[brento1138]

Yes. Much of the world in many of my games seem totally empty... and i am playing on the regular settings. There are entire islands out there that are unclaimed. Now, look around at our real world. Every piece of land is owned by a country, even if there aint anyone livin there.

 

[dannythefool]

There are entire islands out there that are unclaimed. Now, look around at our real world. Every piece of land is owned by a country, even if there aint anyone livin there.

That's a general problem with the AI, it doesn't like settling (or even exploring) islands.

 

[Lebowski89]

I have no problem conquering to an extent that I have like fifty cities, but it can get to a point where even with all the happiness resources I can get my hands on and with most happiness buildings in most of the annexed cities my happiness starts sitting at around -20 or so lol. Mostly because I conquer at such a rate that the initial boost of unhappiness you get when conquering a city keeps looping on and on because there's always a new city taken.

Unhappiness hurts but it isn't drastic like in Civ4, at -20 unhappiness I had like -30% combat effectiveness, which didn't hurt me much because I'd use like 4 battleships and various destroyers to get a city down to like 1% and just rush in a mech inf to take it.

 

[Tutkarz]

-3 in happiness is no problem if I were you I would continue to expand. Put your cities very close together to prevent them from growing and letting them fit more happiness buildings.

There is no cap on how many cities you can have but there is a cap on how many really large cities you can have, I have had 50-60 cities without any problem, must of them were around size 8.

I think the new system just works great. It is much more strategical then the system in civ 4.

While it is good idea and probably i will have to do something like this in my new games but im afraid that it will double my city count and i already had 2-3 cities to set production per turn, which made playing later games like click fest. I know i can set up queue but still its alot of work. And i will rather not play small maps because loosing one city means too much both to me and AI.

 

[dorn]

I'll try to give you some tips Tutkarz.

- currently im settling my cities only at places where they can grab new happines resources. Which leads to gaps in my territory making it somewhat not realistic.

There's no need to only settle cities at places with luxuries. Just make sure they are at least 6 hexes away from any other cities. As long as you properly use "avoid growth" and automatic specialists you can put a city anywhere. Put trade posts on it's most profitable tiles then buy/build happiness buildings. The trade route + trade posts will pay for the happiness buildings.

As for gaps I don't know why you have those. A cities borders can easily cover a huge area even if the population is 5. The Angkor Wat (or that one civ's building that does the same thing) and a couple cultural buildings easily fill up the area.

I simply could not build more cities in order to fill europe at last, because i was stuck with -3 happines. I had all happy buildings in all cities build, all courthouses, every policy and world wonder i could possibly take and all possible resources. Its wrong to me.

Are you saying you hit an actual cap on total cities or you just had too much population? If it was just too much population why didn't you make some new cities and buy new happiness buildings right away then keep their growth down?

Once again the essential point of expanding in Civ 5 is keeping down population growth.

 

[Lebowski89]

Maybe this hasn't affected me as much because I use most my cities as trading post spammers and they don't grow massive anyway?

 

[Tutkarz]

There's no need to only settle cities at places with luxuries. Just make sure they are at least 6 hexes away from any other cities. As long as you properly use "avoid growth" and automatic specialists you can put a city anywhere. Put trade posts on it's most profitable tiles then buy/build happiness buildings. The trade route + trade posts will pay for the happiness buildings.

Looks like im too used to civ IV where i had options. Now my only option is to build trade posts all over the place? I think its bug. Or at last something they missed.

As for gaps I don't know why you have those. A cities borders can easily cover a huge area even if the population is 5. The Angkor Wat (or that one civ's building that does the same thing) and a couple cultural buildings easily fill up the area.

I just really had alot of cities, but if my city is close to baltic sea its unlike that it will cover whole spain pennisula with its border on large map. And i had no point in building city there since there were no "happy" or even strategic resources.

Are you saying you hit an actual cap on total cities or you just had too much population? If it was just too much population why didn't you make some new cities and buy new happiness buildings right away then keep their growth down?

Once again the essential point of expanding in Civ 5 is keeping down population growth.

No cap on cities, just big population. The problem was that my income was shrinking rapidly, so i was stuck with unhappiness and balanced income near zero by setting production to gold in most of my cities. Since this game was coming to an end (i had almost all spaceship parts) i didnt bothered too much about this. It just looked wierd. Like i said maybe next time i will try to use your advices but i think i liked civ IV balance more.

Speaking about civ IV i just realized something. In civ IV when i was trying to conquer alot of land, it crippled my income and i had to lower my sience spending. What it created was that i started lagging behind with techs, so i could not just go and conquer anything because suddenly i would be stuck with pikemen against musket. In civ V since they "streamlined" this system its no longer the case - the more cities i have, the faster i research even if people are unhappy which is wrong imo. And it creates situation where only one tactic is to go and kill everything. I dont know if it can be fixed but it should.

 

[zonk]

Just keep your cities small --

I find it easier to spam settlers in V than IV -- but anything past city #4-5 (I play huge maps), I pretty much build nothing, nada, zero -- and have the city either produce gold or science (usually gold, at least through mid/late game). Set the city to focus on science, commerce, or production (culture being non-existent with no buildings) -- you can keep cities capped at 2 pop until SPs or wonders make it worthwhile to let them grow.

Population - not city count - is the big unhappiness killer. For most of the game, my settlers are actually more like GPs --- all they do is "found" another gold/science tile for centuries at a time.

Once you're rolling in the gold - basically, just a matter of resisting the urge to build troops - they buy whatever improvements you want/are appropriate for the myriad of 2 pop cities.

Also - never, ally with the maritime states! Makes it near impossible to keep zero building 2 pop cities properly small.

 

[Akka]

Nobody likes war, not even the "winning side" after a while...

The real-life Romans disagree.

 

[Tutkarz]

And on top of this i should spam build workers in this cities and sell them for 20gp since it will be more worth than generating wealth ... and maybe i could sometimes even use them for a while ...

 

[nebux]

the problem is, how i see it, that no matter how many resources of the same kind you have you always get the same +5 amount and as you all saw it every civ has most of the same resouce nearby, meaning that you need to trade with others for another. i had all the cotton in the globe in one game. i liked how happiness was implemented in civ 4, but don't like how it is in civ 5, maybe they needed some changes, but the actual system for warmongering like me it's only one solution: raze and pillage everything.
couple that with how easy it is to take cities, faster tech speed, lower production, i only need a very low amount of an army to win. upgrade all of them with money from conquest, pillage and you win everytime.

 

[Jaroth]

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.

I may be misreading what you wrote, but... a trade route is not required to gain access to the city's worked resources. When I first played Civ 5 I had to get that mentality out of me as well because of Civ 4. In 5, you can build a city on the other side of a continent, plop a mine down on some iron, and woila... your empire has access to iron now. Same goes for luxuries.

Also, don't be so quick to wipe out those barb camps. You may as well wait if they're not a nuisance because eventually a city-state will request for them to be annihilated and THEN you can proceed with stomping them out and gaining some influence points along with the gold.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

Also, don't be so quick to wipe out those barb camps. You may as well wait if they're not a nuisance because eventually a city-state will request for them to be annihilated and THEN you can proceed with stomping them out and gaining some influence points along with the gold.

You just have to be careful that someone else doesn't come and take it out while your waiting.

 

[BjoernLars]

Perhaps a system that with certain technologies your luxuries give you more bonuses. Or this could be done by each new era...

 

[dorn]

Looks like im too used to civ IV where i had options. Now my only option is to build trade posts all over the place? I think its bug. Or at last something they missed.

No Civ 4 only had one option it was called "spam settlers".

You are misunderstanding what I meant too I think. You don't need to build trade posts at all. What you need to do is NOT BUILD FARMS. You are having population problems not "too many cities" problems.

The problem was that my income was shrinking rapidly, so i was stuck with unhappiness and balanced income near zero by setting production to gold in most of my cities.

You built too many buildings. That has nothing to do with punishing you for having too many cities. You aren't supposed to build buildings unless you really need them in Civ 5. Don't go throwing down granaries in every city.

In civ V since they "streamlined" this system its no longer the case - the more cities i have, the faster i research even if people are unhappy which is wrong imo.

No that's incorrect. The more PEOPLE you have the more science you get. The amount of cities you have will often have very little to do with your overall population.

 

[skallben]

The real-life Romans disagree.

Maybe the sentiment towards the empire/civilization project but there are other aspects.
Romans were adept in keeping the people satisfied with colosseums, games, sanitation, bath houses etc. Internal affairs demanded the plebs to have more say etc. Living during Octavian and Nero would be quite a difference aswell. Empire mismanagment should make unhappiness IMO.
Also, romans had some serious problems when grain shipments were disrupted from Egypt for instance. There are secondary effects to war, such as the need for food and personell for armies, those priorities can make citizens very weary o the situation. If not Rome have had the Praetorians keeping order we probably have had seen alot more riots.

On topic:
First priority is luxury-aquisition. Settle, conquer to get resources under your control. Trade and city-state alliances are next.

Second priority would be to build at least colosseums in most cities.

After this we get issues, I would not object to a compromise formula between empire-wide happiness and the old system. Each city could have a balance but all and should be counted against eachother and produce the national happiness number. In this model you would require to have luxuries interacting differently with each individual city rather than have a set quote of maximum empire-wide happiness possible to produce from luxuries.

Also, is it +5 from each resource on every map-size?
If this is true, it's obviously not right and needs to be adapted to map-size.

Last of all. I think forbidden palace is slightly unbalanced, it seems to be almost required for large-scale warfare and we get only one since it's a wonder. Wonder-rush and winner-takes-it-all...

 

[zonk]

No Civ 4 only had one option it was called "spam settlers".

You are misunderstanding what I meant too I think. You don't need to build trade posts at all. What you need to do is NOT BUILD FARMS. You are having population problems not "too many cities" problems.

Disagree on TPs... I'm farming TPs worse than cottages in 5. I agree on not building farms, though... The first few days, I was complaining that pigs, corn, and rice were gone... Now? I wish deer, wheat, and sheep (and cows to a lesser extent... at least they contribute a hammer, though) were gone, too. Food tiles are near worthless.

You built too many buildings. That has nothing to do with punishing you for having too many cities. You aren't supposed to build buildings unless you really need them in Civ 5. Don't go throwing down granaries in every city.

Agree there, but I don't like it... I'm not generally one to argue "realism" -- because it's a game, not reality -- and I'll take a good game over a "realistic" gameplay any day of the week... but I think V goes too far. It turns cities into little more than depots (as I said, I'm winning a lot of games by spamming no building/zero pop cities. SPs take a bit more effort, but you can get around this via wonders. In my current game - I've got twice as many cities at the next largest civ -- and I've intentionally NOT gone on conquest sprees just to check out other victory conditions. By all rights, a cultural victory should be closed off to me... it's not... it's probably a distant 3rd behind science/diplomatic at this point, but it's still going to be easily doable). There SHOULD be a basic expectation a city has for buildings.

No that's incorrect. The more PEOPLE you have the more science you get. The amount of cities you have will often have very little to do with your overall population.

To some extent... but like I said - I'm farming settlers as if they were GPs - founding a ton of zero building/2 pop cities, which then basically produce the equivalent of a tiled GP (science/gold... heck - playing as egypt with its free burial tomb, culture, too... though the SP scaling for city count makes this a less than even trade-off).