Originally posted by tomart109
Hey!! I LIKE "massive expansion", if by that you mean a large empire with lots of cities - what's so wrong with wanting to rule the world like Alexander or Rome?????? And build cities everywhere?
I take great umbrage with someone deciding to penalize my play style... it's a Solitaire game, remember??
One man's strategy is another man's exploit.
Hey - it's only my speculation - take it up with the designers, not me!
And besides, from a game designer's point of view, what they're really after is good balance -- i.e., present the player with lots of interesting choices. If there is no "penalty," or at least rapidly declining benefit, to expanding, then the interesting choices are weakened -- do I remain content with my compact and efficient empire? Why no, I think I'll expand to produce a large and efficient empire. Without something to weaken massive expansion, why wouldn't you always seek to expand your power- it would always be more effective (so less interesting choice). The game then becomes even more skewed towards "the strong get stronger and the weaker get weaker" -- again IMHO, there is ample evidence that the game is designed in a way to reduce this effect (tech costs much lower for the laggards; more powerful civ tends to get "ganged up on" by others; price of luxuries is much greater for larger empires, etc.)
I'm not saying I love the present corruption regime, but I do agree with the philosophy that continuous expansion must not provide continuous, linear, benefit. And even with a distnace corruption factor in place, I still think you need something to inhibit ICS -- if it weren't penalized by some methodology, it would unquestionably be more powerful, which again reduces the interesting choices available to the player. YMMV.
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