Why such small empires?

[ColtSeavers]

I think most players probably do not enjoy managing dozens of cities.

pure speculation... There is a reason why Civ 4 is still (after more than 10 years after its release!) that popular, and that is the possibilty of REAL EMPIRE building!

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

And then there are the people who want to manage lots and lots of cities, to build more and more stuff, who don't want more than a token military (6 to 8 military units should be enough for anyone!), who would love to see the game focus on more non-violent competition and maybe even collaborative ventures among civilizations, who would answer anyone who says that having a big military is realistic that having a sufficiently large military to conquer the world is utterly unrealistic, who turn off the barbarians and set AI aggression as low as possible, all to build more stuff in more cities.

That's not me, but I utterly sympathize, because building a civ has always been more interesting than this game's military options, especially versus an AI.

Anyway,

Ken

 

[BrokenBokken]

pure speculation... There is a reason why Civ 4 is still (after more than 10 years after its release!) that popular, and that is the possibilty of REAL EMPIRE building!

Civ IV is estimated to have sold over 3 million and CiV is estimated over 7 million. To say Civ IV shows the popularity of empire building and ignore the fact that CiV more than doubled it kind of defeats your point.

 

[ColtSeavers]

Civ IV is estimated to have sold over 3 million and CiV is estimated over 7 million. To say Civ IV shows the popularity of empire building and ignore the fact that CiV more than doubled it kind of defeats your point.

Non sense, comparing the sales of game which was released more than 5 years later (including the famous steam sales) is comparing apples with oranges

 

[ColtSeavers]

Civ IV is estimated to have sold over 3 million and CiV is estimated over 7 million. To say Civ IV shows the popularity of empire building and ignore the fact that CiV more than doubled it kind of defeats your point.

besides where did you get the "3 Mio" from? according to steam, Civ 4 has been sold "more than 6 Mio units".

 

[BrokenBokken]

Non sense, comparing the sales of game which was released more than 5 years later (including the famous steam sales) is comparing apples with oranges

Nah. You've pretty much just proven that you believe facts to suit your theories as opposed to believing theories that suit that facts. "You can't compare those two things because that comparison doesn't support my world view!" Unless you want to legitimately make an argument about why that can't be compared anyway.

Civ IV has been out longer. Longer lifetime = more opportunity for sales.

"But newer games sell more in general! The hobby is more popular now!" That's correct. Because capitalist markets will naturally move products in the direction that increase sales. The longer a market has been in play, the more data they have to create the best selling product and move in a desired direction. Even if both games had the same market share of overall consumers, if one did so with a larger pool then it's still clearly more successful and thus more popular.

"CiV being on steam and with their sales has inflated it's number!" Civ IV has also been on steam for a very long time, and also part of steam's famous sales. That 3 million includes, but is not limited to steam for Civ IV.

I've always hated the apples and oranges expression. You can compare apples and oranges. Saying apples and oranges taste different is a comparison. You're comparing the taste. Everything you ever assess in your life is based on relativity and comparisons. Everything can be compare. Everything is always compared.

Apparently the article I was looking at however was from 2009, and the CiV article was from 2013, so there is a chance that those numbers have become much closer due to the date discrepancies. But if you want to use steam to compare popularity there are 422 people playing civ IV right now to CiV's 37,922.

 

[ColtSeavers]

Nah. You've pretty much just proven that you believe facts to suit your theories as opposed to believing theories that suit that facts. "You can't compare those two things because that comparison doesn't support my world view!" Unless you want to legitimately make an argument about why that can't be compared anyway.

Civ IV has been out longer. Longer lifetime = more opportunity for sales.

"But newer games sell more in general! The hobby is more popular now!" That's correct. Because capitalist markets will naturally move products in the direction that increase sales. The longer a market has been in play, the more data they have to create the best selling product and move in a desired direction. Even if both games had the same market share of overall consumers, if one did so with a larger pool then it's still clearly more successful and thus more popular.

"CiV being on steam and with their sales has inflated it's number!" Civ IV has also been on steam for a very long time, and also part of steam's famous sales. That 3 million includes, but is not limited to steam for Civ IV.

I've always hated the apples and oranges expression. You can compare apples and oranges. Saying apples and oranges taste different is a comparison. You're comparing the taste. Everything you ever assess in your life is based on relativity and comparisons. Everything can be compare. Everything is always compared.

Apparently the article I was looking at however was from 2009, and the CiV article was from 2013, so there is a chance that those numbers have become much closer due to the date discrepancies. But if you want to use steam to compare popularity there are 422 people playing civ IV right now to CiV's 37,922.

as matter of fact i agree with most of your points! Concerning the actual topic: in my opinion, the "ideal" size of an empire has to be scaled to the size of the map.
If one likes 6-8 cities empires, one plays standard
size maps, if you play Huge! maps however, this figure should be more in the ballpark of 15-20 cities!

 

[ProMeTheus112]

Given the complexity and level of detail for setting up cities, using them properly, defending them properly etc,
I think "6-8 for a small empire" on standard map sounds great tbh, (large empire on standard map would be woot, 12-16 cities ? a medium size empire around 8-12 ?). Too many cities and it becomes bit too consuming to keep track of everything each turn, but I think for a nice complexity anything between 8 and 16 sounds good..... that's just throwing numbers though, hoping interesting things can be done in managing the details for a small empire of 6 cities too!

 

[Lucius_]

But if you want to use steam to compare popularity there are 422 people playing civ IV right now to CiV's 37,922.

This is probably the best way to indicate popularity. Only thing better is percentage of people playing compared to owners. Using Steamspy, there are 1.4 million copies of Civ IV on Steam and CiV has 9.1 million copies on Steam. Using those stats above, that is 0.003% of Civ IV owners on Steam still playing it vs 4.17% of CiV owners still playing. Of course these numbers can only be taken with a grain of salt because we do not know how many Civ IV owners are playing off of Steam.

 

[Siptah]

For purely egoistical reason I don't want the usual empire to have 20+ cities. It does mean maps are larger and better hardware is needed to play the game. I'm playing with my laptop that I also use for work and that I carry around almost every day. For that reason, it's a 13" laptop. I'd hate to buy a desktop pc or a larger laptop that just lies around only for playing civ.
And while I liked having very large empires in the first 4 Civ games (especially in II), I was also very happy with Civ 5 where I almost never had more than 10 non-puppet cities. I never missed having more, and I guess I won't miss it in civvi.

 

[ColtSeavers]

This is probably the best way to indicate popularity. Only thing better is percentage of people playing compared to owners. Using Steamspy, there are 1.4 million copies of Civ IV on Steam and CiV has 9.1 million copies on Steam. Using those stats above, that is 0.003% of Civ IV owners on Steam still playing it vs 4.17% of CiV owners still playing. Of course these numbers can only be taken with a grain of salt because we do not know how many Civ IV owners are playing off of Steam.

I play Civ 4 without ever having logged into Steam for this, and my take is, a lot of people do the same. Therefore this comparison doesnt make much sense imho.

 

[MikalJ]

I play Civ 4 without ever having logged into Steam for this, and my take is, a lot of people do the same. Therefore this comparison doesnt make much sense imho.

While I'm exclusively a IV player (for now!), and I've never played on Steam, you and I arn't anywhere near as statistically important as the 38,000 people playing V on Steam. Since we don't have 'currently playing' statistics for people playing offline, we have no way of saying what is 'a lot of people'? The active members of these forums? Still doesn't compare in size to the above figures.

Ultimately, the comparison makes sense, since it's comparing Steam players of V with Steam players of IV.

 

[Magil]

Putting aside yet more IV versus V speculation and hypothesizing...

Really, all it'd take is one video of someone successfully managing a large, thriving empire to assuage this fear. Instead of yet another video with someone having two or three cities when they break into the medieval era.

Sure, it could be paranoia on our part. Maybe the game mechanics will support large empires just fine. I'd just like to be thrown a bone here, and frankly I'm surprised with all the videos we've had nobody has really tried to do some rapid expansion until the land runs out.

 

[stealth_nsk]

While I'm exclusively a IV player (for now!), and I've never played on Steam, you and I arn't anywhere near as statistically important as the 38,000 people playing V on Steam. Since we don't have 'currently playing' statistics for people playing offline, we have no way of saying what is 'a lot of people'? The active members of these forums? Still doesn't compare in size to the above figures.

Civ4 was initially sold without Steam with Steam support being added later. A lot of people bought it before the Steam. Overall the sales of Civ4 are about 3M, while SteamSpy lists only 1,35M owners. While both numbers aren't precise, it's clear what Steam stats aren't very informative on Civ4.

 

[Janskey]

To add more confusion to the statistics, some people, like me, bought the physical copy of Civ IV and later the Steam version. I bought my Civ V Complete edition from a Humble Bundle and that included Civ III and IV Complete editions (all Steam versions).

 

[ColtSeavers]

To add more confusion to the statistics, some people, like me, bought the physical copy of Civ IV and later the Steam version. I bought my Civ V Complete edition from a Humble Bundle and that included Civ III and IV Complete editions (all Steam versions).

furthermore all the pirate copies would have to be included... in the end, i guess we can all agree, that both Civ 4 and Civ 5 were imensely successful. Having the possibilty of playing 6-8 city empires (on small/ standard maps) and play large (15- 20+ cities) empires on large/ huge maps, should be statisfiable for either taste!

 

[Jimdigriz]

More cities the better! I cant help but always play Civ this way since the very start. I always play Huge and Marathon though of course.

The 4 city strategy might have been a good way to win certain ways etc but I just cant be bothered with a small empire like that.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think that while the mechanics allow large empires, there is a problem with management. Civ4 had savable queues. Civ 5 had puppets. Both had auto workers. Civ6 has none of that (since Ed hates automation). So I am afraid that the only downside to a big empire will be that it is tedious.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Eh, I'll have to see where I stand with this when the game comes out.

In CivIV and earlier, having 50 cities didn't mean doing more things: it meant doing more or less the same exact thing in the same order 50 or so times. I do that at work all day so I don't need it in my entertainment as well. So I didn't really miss that aspect in 5 (though the game was way too punishing for civs larger than 4 or so).

Now in the new Civ, it looks like the cities should be a bit more unique, so maybe it will be more interesting.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

A large empire is only one of many investments you can do and if large empire is always the best investment then strategy will be severely limited.

Here are some other investment you can do early on:
*Wonders: Generally give some permament advantage.
*Great people (Mainly by districts and project): often give a permament or a significant temporary advantage.
*Military: To defeat barbarians and raid other civs to stunt their economy development.

Both wonders and great people will likely lead to a smaller empire compared to building settler after settler but then getting a few early wonders or great people can give you a permament advantage for the rest of the game.

The question should be something like: is an extra city worth a wonder/great person.