[NFP] Why is Wide > Tall?

[SammyKhalifa]

You can go tall in this game fairly easily. You can go just wide (lots of low pop cities) but that's actually not that great because of scaling production costs. The best strategy is wide AND tall, as far as your amenities or tolerance for micromanagent allow, which may be different from game to game. Wide alone is not really superior to tall, which is as it should be. Wide and tall IS superior to tall, which is also as it should be.

Having tall be the best strategy by far is one of the stupidest things Civ V did.

That was mostly in the last patch, over-compensating. Now it's frozen in time that way. I think one more pass over and it would have been in a great place in regards to this.

 

[Victoria]

This is a very weak argument.

I disagree, The point is one city can get hundreds of science. I was not saying it was as good as wide, I made that very clear. I was making the point that tall is not useless, more challenging would be the way to put it. I’ve seen GOTM games where people finish in roughly the same time with 20 cities and 10 cities, War and wide does weaken in some ways.

At the end of the day, it is still far easier to do playing wide, and tall should be improved relative to wide so as to encourage more varied gameplay

Your choice, I think you are in the minority in this thread though. I knew what tall was in V but in VI I do not really think along this line, it’s a hang up, no more. Is 10 cities of 10 pop and one of 15 pop a tall or wide.
I have played a few games getting 10 pop30 cities, fun and different. You think this game has no variety? V had no variety.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I disagree, The point is one city can get hundreds of science. I was not saying it was as good as wide, I made that very clear. I was making the point that tall is not useless, more challenging would be the way to put it. I’ve seen GOTM games where people finish in roughly the same time with 20 cities and 10 cities, War and wide does weaken in some ways.

Your choice, I think you are in the minority in this thread though. I knew what tall was in V but in VI I do not really think along this line, it’s a hang up, no more. Is 10 cities of 10 pop and one of 15 pop a tall or wide.
I have played a few games getting 10 pop30 cities, fun and different. You think this game has no variety? V had no variety.

Yeah, in the final patch it was all about four cities tall. They over compensated.

 

[AlanC9]

Absolutely this. Civ is all about painting the map in your colour. What's the fun in that if you can't do it?

Is it? I find that gets dull long before the end of the game.

 

[AriochIV]

Is it? I find that gets dull long before the end of the game.

I think that's an issue more with the victory conditions rather than the core mechanics. Civ IV-V :"domination" victory is sorely missed.

 

[KayAU]

I think the original question has been answered, so I will not repeat what others already have said. I will, however, join the debate as to whether the balance should be changed, as there seems to be many who think the balance is fine because you can choose to go tall if you want to. Well, to that point I would say that you could go wide in Civ V as well, but I rarely see anyone arguing that tall wasn't overpowered compared to wide in that game. Not even myself, as someone who enjoys building a limited number of enormous cities and absolutely hates late game micro-management, would argue that the balance in Civ V was right.

I do think they went way to far in the opposite direction with Civ VI, though. These are my main problems with it:

• Tall cities are far to weak
• There is no real limitation in how wide you can go, or how quickly, regardless of social and technological development
• There is no challenge involved in holding a vast empire together

Making tall impressive cities is pretty much a waste of time and resources, as spreading the same population out into numerous smaller cities gives you much more of pretty much everything. I don't this makes sense. You can only have one of each type of district, and there really aren't many synergies to be had between districts in a city. This means that the Commercial Hub or Campus of the world's largest city will output basically the same as any other mid-sized city in the world.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Civ is all about painting the map in your colour. What's the fun in that if you can't do it?

For some people it's true. For some people, it is not

This is also a problem with map size.
A tall effective strategy on a huge map would make it crazy OP in a small one. And developers seem to balance the game on a small map.
One city challenge on deity is doable (Potato video with Korea) on a huge map it would be impossible imo.
EDIT and of cause a win condition. Limited great works space is a good example.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I disagree, The point is one city can get hundreds of science. I was not saying it was as good as wide, I made that very clear. I was making the point that tall is not useless, more challenging would be the way to put it. I’ve seen GOTM games where people finish in roughly the same time with 20 cities and 10 cities, War and wide does weaken in some ways.

Your choice, I think you are in the minority in this thread though. I knew what tall was in V but in VI I do not really think along this line, it’s a hang up, no more. Is 10 cities of 10 pop and one of 15 pop a tall or wide.
I have played a few games getting 10 pop30 cities, fun and different. You think this game has no variety? V had no variety.

Disagree on Civ V. In Civ V final patch, I usually play with 9-12 cities and win SV around turn 220-230. In Civ V you have to choose between wide and tall, and wide always outperforms tall, unless born on islands where I have to do frigate rush.

 

[Victoria]

Disagree on Civ V.

Fair enough, I got bored of V, perhaps that some of it but regardless I think @AriochIV nailed it rightly down to an alternative a thread for those wanting more of a game challenge.

 

[Kibikus]

I think it mostly comes down to map generation and spawn locations.

If there's a lot of free space, why wouldn't you want to settle it?
And if you're squeezed in, you have a choice - go to war, or develop your cities so that they maximize yields from the terrain available.

I do agree that currently it's not that beneficial to have a high pop city, even though they tried to boost it with Pingala, Rationalism, etc.

Maybe a policy that gives yields per pop, although if you could stack it with Rationalism, etc. it would be too strong. Ideally there would be some mutually exclusive policies that boost either district adjacency, building yields, or yields per pop, but that's outside the scope of Civ VI it seems.

Edit: I guess a simple solution would be to remove the +3 adjacency requirement from Rationalism, etc., instead have another 50% building yields to cities with 20 pop for example.

Edit 2: Also it really depends on victory type. Science and religious are OK with fewer cities, but culture is objectively better with more cities -> more slots for great works, more parks and resorts, etc. Maybe have a tourism percentage multiplier from high pop cities (more hotel beds in the city I guess).

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

The problem is: all empires always had to face challenges when going tall and having a multicultural empire. But in Civ VI, when you conquer your city (except maybe some minor amenities troubles or loyalty issues due to neighboring cities), it's like if, suddenly, they were an integral part of the empire. Which is outright stupid. The reasons why the Roman, British or Ottoman empires stood the test of time was because, to some extent, when they brought weapons, they also brought their culture in it, making the conquered territories feel as if they were part of the empire. To some extent, of course, but it's important to notice that India still kept English as a national language due to british imperialism and cultural influence.

We need some mechanics to punish in some way wide empires. Not as stupidly as Civ V but more like Civ IV:

• The corruption mechanic was a good system to represent distance from the governmental centers. We could make something similar: each city lose 1 loyalty each 10 tiles from the Capital and the city with the Government Plaza. This way, you'll have to keep an eye on your peripheric territories and just not let them rot in the sun as you focus your attention to the other side of the Empire.
• Amenities should play a bigger role in how your cities behave too, but since Amenities favor wide plays rather than tall, it would need a rework.
• The culture system of Civ IV was also interesting. Your culture spreads and each tile had a percentage of culture. In your core empire, it was 100% your culture, but at borders it was often 50/50. Having a similar system, then basing the amenities needed on this percentage and make your cities loosing loyalty from unhapiness would be a good start.

We need mechanics to represent the struggles big empires had to stay cohesive. Governors helped that in a way (even if governors are more tailored for a tall play than wide) but we need more.

 

[AlanC9]

I think that's an issue more with the victory conditions rather than the core mechanics. Civ IV-V :"domination" victory is sorely missed.

Really? I find the Civ VI version a bit easier to pull off than Civ IV's (I ragequit Civ V, so I don't have anything to say about it), since I can execute it with late quick strikes against the remaining capitals. In Civ IV I actually had to overrun most of the map. Note that I typically play on relatively small maps, so the capitals are usually accessible.; I don't know if this changes on larger maps.

The problem is: all empires always had to face challenges when going tall and having a multicultural empire. But in Civ VI, when you conquer your city (except maybe some minor amenities troubles or loyalty issues due to neighboring cities), it's like if, suddenly, they were an integral part of the empire. Which is outright stupid. The reasons why the Roman, British or Ottoman empires stood the test of time was because, to some extent, when they brought weapons, they also brought their culture in it, making the conquered territories feel as if they were part of the empire. To some extent, of course, but it's important to notice that India still kept English as a national language due to british imperialism and cultural influence.

We need some mechanics to punish in some way wide empires. Not as stupidly as Civ V but more like Civ IV:

• The corruption mechanic was a good system to represent distance from the governmental centers. We could make something similar: each city lose 1 loyalty each 10 tiles from the Capital and the city with the Government Plaza. This way, you'll have to keep an eye on your peripheric territories and just not let them rot in the sun as you focus your attention to the other side of the Empire.
• Amenities should play a bigger role in how your cities behave too, but since Amenities favor wide plays rather than tall, it would need a rework.
• The culture system of Civ IV was also interesting. Your culture spreads and each tile had a percentage of culture. In your core empire, it was 100% your culture, but at borders it was often 50/50. Having a similar system, then basing the amenities needed on this percentage and make your cities loosing loyalty from unhapiness would be a good start.

We need mechanics to represent the struggles big empires had to stay cohesive. Governors helped that in a way (even if governors are more tailored for a tall play than wide) but we need more.

I like the idea. I'm not sure enough of the playerbase would agree.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Is it? I find that gets dull long before the end of the game.

I don't really care about winning. If I get bored, I just restart.

I think that's an issue more with the victory conditions rather than the core mechanics. Civ IV-V :"domination" victory is sorely missed.

Domination is actually, by far the most boring victory type in the Civ 4-5 games to me? I actually won my first Civ5 dom game *ever* yesterday, after 1.7K hours (as Venice on a Huge Pangaea map) and god it was rewarding to win it because becoming A Warmongering Venice was the last thing i had on my Civ 5 bucket list but getting there was such an agoniiiiizing grind. Same for both of my dom wins in Civ 6 (as Persia and Eleanor). I'm honestly relieved when I can just passively win through culture, as the endgame is and has always been a dull slog in any iteration since Civ 4.

 

[bengalryan9]

Is it? I find that gets dull long before the end of the game.

You're talking to Mr. "When I have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" here...

 

[GrumboMumbo]

I think people have got a very different memory of civ5 to me. I think it has always been more powerful to have more cities. If you sat back on a handful of cities in civ5, you would often fall behind to empires that expanded or took their neighbours land. The difference was, in civ5 it was usually a mistake to settle a garbage city. In 6, it is always better to spam another settler just to settle the most garbage tundra city imaginable, then chop out a campus, and buy all the campus buildings. In a matter of turns you now have 4 pop city which is producing as much science as one that has been around for 100 turns. That is the element that doesn't make sense to me.

I don't really know how to solve this problem, apart from altering the yields of the buildings to match population. I am also convinced that some tweaks to social policies and governors along with the government plaza buildings could help to improve this. Instead of that card that gives 2 housing/1 amenity to cities with governors, change it to something that rewards the player for having a governor with lots of promotions. Maybe food from specialists or bonus yields for cities with a governor. I think it would be awesome to see a policy card which rewards the player for having a Governor with a completed promotion tree. You usually only have enough promotions to get a couple of Governors maxed out, so this bonus could be large without being broken.

It would just be nice to have more variety of strategic options than the classic, Faith/Monumentality/Settler spam

 

[Deadly Dog]

Civ V for me ended up feeling very diverse in terms of tall vs wide. After about a year of spamming Tradition and Rationalism, I started messing around with combos for synergy with civ traits like Honor and Piety for Japan, or Piety and Patronage for Siam.

The problem as I see it is that developers are reluctant to employ a malus on expansion such as waste/corruption (gone after civ3? civ4?) as they draw the most complaints from the player base. But waste/corruption actually worked, it slowed the extent of land empires and naval empires both to the tech tree and infrastructure.

I still play as if additional cities past 12 or 16 or whatever are on diminishing returns, but that's more to do with me being uninterested in managing another city when I still have to wander over the map to see what each city is doing.

 

[Aabraxan]

With the caveat that I'm a complete Civ6 newb, I'll say that there's one argument I haven't seen addressed, but it's entirely possible I overlooked it. From a warmonger's perspective, wide always has one advantage over tall. As long as each city can only produce one unit per turn, more cities will always mean being able to produce more units per turn than fewer, bigger cities.

 

[ezzlar]

The Civ V concept of 4 cities was boring. Rhye´s got it exactly right. Each city expansion was a careful consideration of the extra yields, resources and strategic importance versus the extra costs in form of higher maintenance, science penalty and lower stability. I clearly avoided some city spots and opportunities.

 

[oSiyeza]

Absolutely this. Civ is all about painting the map in your colour. What's the fun in that if you can't do it?

You may think it is. I just find extremely boring to manage more than 10 cities, so in the end I often have to chose on doing worse or bore myself with micromanagement.

Is not that i want to challenge myself by playing tall, I just don't want to manage 50 cities doing the same thing over and over again, but if I don't, then the game will punish me for it. That is the problem.

You want to paint the map your color, thats fine. But if there is only one really good way to play, all games may easily end feeling the same, and each city may also end feeling the same, and then it may end feeling like no real tactic or decision making is required...

Bigger cities should be stronger than they are and more unique. You should be able to claim more land and have 2 campus in a 20 city pop, for example. Others have propossed ideas like city and district output scaling with pop, and there are a lot of good ways to make it work without taking from wide players.

A city of size 20 should be stronger, not weaker, than 2 cities of size 10. And getting really tall cities should be harder if you focus on having as many cities as posible.

I think thats is pretty much what the "tall" players want. And even if I don't consider myself one necessarily, I agree 100% with that.

In summary, you should be able to paint the map your color if you want, but you also should not be forzed to. That should not be the only effective way to play without handicapping yourself. And the counterargument should not be: well if you are not able to beat the stupid AI with 5 cities is your fault for not being good. We just want a more balanced game that allows for more play styles.

 

[PhilBowles]

I've read it frequently on these forums that wide is better than tall. However, I haven't seen much of an explanation as to why that is. There are enough ways to get housing/food/amenities to be able to go tall... So why is tall better?

Smaller cities grow more quickly so give you more population and workable tiles overall, you have more production slots, and can create more duplicate districts and their buildings - useful both for straight production and great person points. These are truisms of the way Civ games work overall - in Civ 6 specifically the ability to make more commercial hubs/harbors also means more trade routes.

Going wide is intrinsically so much better than going tall that most Civ games have had some form of expansion constraint. Civ VI has done away with that altogether, other than scaling costs of settlers, so going wide is especially effective in Civ VI.