Wide vs Tall--Balance?

[jye42]

Wide tends to be better than Tall even if they try to balance it. Only because if you spread first you only need wait to become tall. If you go tall first then you can only go wide by conquest. Even if you use late game setters the cities are so far behind the rest they are nearly useless.

I would like to see Explorers (Renaissance Scout) and Colonists (Renaissance Settlers). This would allow for the colonization which occurred historically. Colonists could found a city with say 3 pop & some basic starting buildings but at a much higher build cost. Colonists could even reduce the pop of the city that constructs them to represent large migrations of people.

This would make tall more viable bu having late game settling be less useless, allowing for European style nations which had small amounts of land at home but huge colonies overseas.

 

[megabearsfan]

Sure, but still there need to be mechanisms in place to limit snowballing. If there is no penalty to expansion, the 19th city that you plonk down in poor terrain just to grab land and don't even bother to expand properly with districts and improvements will STILL be a net gain to your empire. And quite frankly that's just as boring as CiV vanilla's ICS. So I hope there will be cases where if you settle a city in bad terrain and do bad choices with buildings and improvements, it will actually be a net drain to your empire (as in cIV and indeed IRL), and that should be more than the opportunity cost of building a settler.

I would hope that building any city, whether it's your first city or your 19th, without properly expanding it and building districts should result in net loss. If I recall correctly, I think Civ IV handled this well by increasing the maintenance of each new city. Your old cities had to support any new cities until they developed enough to be self-sufficient. So in addition to the opportunity cost of building a settler, a new city also had a high up-front cost. But once that city had developed its infrastructure, it would be very productive. Civ V BNW encouraged "tall" empires because the up-front costs for founding new cities was high and the long-term gains were relatively low compared to the persistent costs (maintenance, global happiness). Or at least, it took so long to see those gains that settling after the medieval era was mostly pointless.

Civ VI could be similar to Civ IV. Since builders have limited charges, founding new cities not only requires an investment in settlers (and the opportunity cost of not building something besides the settler), but you also have to invest in more builders. You can't just keep using the workers that you built at the beginning of the game to improve your mid / late-game cities. BNW also added the internal trade routes, and Civ VI (as far as I've heard) is bringing a similar system back. So I can see another system in which it might be a practical necessity to send trade routes to/from your newly-founded cities in order to get them to be productive (and to build a road). So that would also mean that there's a loss of trade revenue since that route isn't going to a profitable foreign city. If you're just spamming settlers and builders, then these up-front costs would spiral out of control and the rest of your empire might never get anything done, or you'd be at extreme risk of invasion.

So the counter-mechanism could just be a combination of high start-up cost, opportunity cost, and the time it takes to make a new city cost-neutral or net positive. I don't know that the game necessarily needs anything more, as long as those costs are well-balanced. If that's not enough, then perhaps those costs could simply scale up as you build more cities (i.e. cost of settlers, builders, districts, etc. increasing based on number of cities). And if that's still not enough, then the per city science / culture penalty could also be applied. Short-term, you'd hurt your science/culture output, but once you got your library / monument up and running, that new city would be (at least) science/culture-neutral. It's hard to judge until we can actually play the game.

 

[Lucius_]

Sure, but still there need to be mechanisms in place to limit snowballing. If there is no penalty to expansion, the 19th city that you plonk down in poor terrain just to grab land and don't even bother to expand properly with districts and improvements will STILL be a net gain to your empire. And quite frankly that's just as boring as CiV vanilla's ICS. So I hope there will be cases where if you settle a city in bad terrain and do bad choices with buildings and improvements, it will actually be a net drain to your empire (as in cIV and indeed IRL), and that should be more than the opportunity cost of building a settler.

Well we do know that opportunity cost of building settlers increases with each one you build, so I'd like to think that by the 19th settler, you are spending a significant production investment. I'm not sure if we know how much the cost increases though so it may not even be significant enough. I do agree, there needs to be something that limits expansion. If I ask myself, "should I build another city?", and I say "sure, why not", or worse "Yes" infinitely, than there is a major issue.

 

[Magil]

Remember that the city center counts as a district, so each city may also increase district costs around the board. Hardly confirmed but possible.

 

[megabearsfan]

Well we do know that opportunity cost of building settlers increases with each one you build, so I'd like to think that by the 19th settler, you are spending a significant production investment. I'm not sure if we know how much the cost increases though so it may not even be significant enough. I do agree, there needs to be something that limits expansion. If I ask myself, "should I build another city?", and I say "sure, why not", or worse "Yes" infinitely, than there is a major issue.

Well, the player shouldn't settle for the sake of settling. But I think as long as there is valuable real estate on the board, then civs should still be able to compete for it. The question shouldn't be "should I build another city?", the question should be "Is there any place where a city would be valuable?" If that answer is "Yes", then there should be no reason why you shouldn't settle there so long as you can afford to do so.

Founding a city should be an investment. The issue should be whether or not that investment will eventually pay off.

 

[VainApocalypse]

The Roman Empire is widely considered one of the greatest civilizations in history. For years in Europe, it was held up as sort of a standard to be aspired to, there were attempts in the Medieval period to establish successor-states to the Roman Empire. Yes, it eventually fell, but it persisted for centuries, since the "crowning" of Augustus as the first Roman emperor. It was certainly a civilization that "stood the test of time", as Greco-Roman culture has persisted and spread throughout the Western world for centuries after the empire's fall.

The Roman empire was a very large empire--at its height, Wikipedia says it covered 5 million square kilometers. But while the Roman empire was known for its strong military, it was also well-known for its architecture, its inventions, its philosophy, its culture, its political systems, and its art. It was hardly an empire filled with shanty towns. Well, that's the ideal anyway, how it was in reality is certainly up for debate.

But I always thought this vision of the Roman empire was the ideal one should aspire to in Civilization. I want to establish an empire that has a flourishing culture, state-of-the-art science, breathtaking monuments, and Pax Romana. And yes, massive borders, an empire that stretches from coast to coast, holding sway over millions of people over thousands of miles. To focus on one or two aspects and ignore the rest is, to me, to betray the ideal of building a civilization which stands the test of time.

Yes, Rome is an example, but then you have something like the Venetian republic that lasted 1100 years without covering the map of Europe.

Both were civilizations that stood the test of time, but their character was different. By trying to force every Civ into a Roman archetype, you're not doing justice to the variety of civilizational flavors that are capable of standing the test of time.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Yes, Rome is an example, but then you have something like the Venetian republic that lasted 1100 years without covering the map of Europe.

Both were civilizations that stood the test of time, but their character was different. By trying to force every Civ into a Roman archetype, you're not doing justice to the variety of civilizational flavors that are capable of standing the test of time.

One City Challenge has been around for a very long time, and included as an option in Civ 4 & 5.
That in itself should be sufficient representation.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, the same should be done with a "Tall" option checkbox.
Everyone can be reasonably content with this, while the main game can be balanced around 4X principles.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

Any player who builds wider still will want to build taller too, someone who wants to build taller will also want to build wider. Both "taller" and "wider" are elements of gameplay of civ you can only disregard if you accept the disadvantage.

 

[qadams]

<snip>
I would like to see Explorers (Renaissance Scout) and Colonists (Renaissance Settlers). This would allow for the colonization which occurred historically. Colonists could found a city with say 3 pop & some basic starting buildings but at a much higher build cost. Colonists could even reduce the pop of the city that constructs them to represent large migrations of people.

This would make tall more viable by having late game settling be less useless, allowing for European style nations which had small amounts of land at home but huge colonies overseas.

^^^ This. Definitely this. In Civ 5 I use various mods to do that. It just makes so much sense. Can anyone suggest a good reason why Civ 6 should not include something like it?

 

[stealth_nsk]

^^^ This. Definitely this. In Civ 5 I used various mods to do that. It just makes so much sense. Can anyone suggest a good reason why Civ 6 should not include something like this?

We have Rangers in Civ6, which are Scout upgrade at Rifling.

Speaking about Colonists - it sounds like cool idea.

EDIT: Although, of course this needs to be balanced. Having less developed frontier cities is part of the balance. Without artificial limits of Civ5 global happiness and science/culture penalties, settling advanced cities could end up being too cheesy.

 

[Stilgar08]

Well we do know that opportunity cost of building settlers increases with each one you build, so I'd like to think that by the 19th settler, you are spending a significant production investment...

... which might encourage warmongering since there is no rise in production cost for the conquered cities. Which is one of my (slight) worries...

Wide empires will fall back technology-wise while having a lead in the culture-tree so balance could be accomplished if that is true. Shirk mentioned that in several interviews. We'll have to see how it plays out though...

CiVI must overcome the "Tradition - 4 cities-are perfect" mantra of CiV in every case! It always bugged me! What kind of great empire is that? So I prefer more "encouraging" of wide empires than tall ones. Makes sense to me - It's Civilization, not SimCity after all.

One City Challenge has been around for a very long time, and included as an option in Civ 4 & 5.
That in itself should be sufficient representation.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, the same should be done with a "Tall" option checkbox.
Everyone can be reasonably content with this, while the main game can be balanced around 4X principles.

To me that's the perfect answer to it. If you want to go tall it should be difficult to accomplish and if you are not "disciplined" enough to stick to your tall gamestyle you could limit yourself with a Tall option where you might even be able to decide for yourself how many cities are tall for you (not only OCC but 2CC, 3CC...) I like it. If not included it might/should be moddable, right?

 

[stealth_nsk]

... which might encourage warmongering sicne there is no rise in production cost for the conquered cities.

You need to produce military units, though. The more units you need, the more advanced they are - the bigger production expenses are here.

 

[Stilgar08]

You need to produce military units, though. The more units you need, the more advanced they are - the bigger production expenses are here.

Shirk stated you might not have the most advanced units with wide empires, but could have lots of the older weaker ones when going wide - And he mentioned the advantages wide empires will have in the civics tree while they'll have a disadvantage in the tech tree...

 

[GAGA Extrem]

One City Challenge has been around for a very long time, and included as an option in Civ 4 & 5.
That in itself should be sufficient representation.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, the same should be done with a "Tall" option checkbox.
Everyone can be reasonably content with this, while the main game can be balanced around 4X principles.

I think it would be good if we could get away from the old "paint the whole map in your color" paradigm of many strategy / 4X games. Sure, it is a power fantasy that feels awesome, but we should remember that it was only made viable in the past by vastely skewing games towards a wide playstile in the first place.

Expansion (in a historical sense) has a lot of prerequisites and even more consequences - and the latter is rarely, if ever, touched in games. Either because it is hard to represent (like the Iberian countries losing significant parts of their population via colonial emigration, leading to a depopulated Hinterland) or because we aren't really comfortable with it as a modern society (like killing off the able-bodied male citizen in a conquered city and selling the rest of the population into slavery).

And yes, I know, it's just a game so we can (and should) take liberties and not stick to the boring (or atrocious) part of history. But in that case someone did put it quite well on the first page: Wide vs. Tall can be a balance made to make decision making more meaningful. There is really no need to make either side inherently better. I am actually very happy that CIV5 tried to tackle that issue. It didn't turn out perfect - in vanilla wide was vastly OP, with BNW tall is a bit too strong in the early game - but overall they got quite close. Venice in particular is a great example for that.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

I totally agree that expansion is boring if it's only about "painting as much of the map in your color" but that's not the case in Civ 4 and from what has been shown I expect even better from Civ 6 really!

I didn't know about interview saying wider => more culture while taller => more science or something like that (hoping it's not actually wider => science penalty // taller => culture penalty ^^ or is it both? I feel that would enforce certain playstyles too much?). It's really interesting when I think of the victory conditions. Tbh game-wise it feels pretty good, I wonder what mechanics cause this and how it works.

 

[VainApocalypse]

One City Challenge has been around for a very long time, and included as an option in Civ 4 & 5.
That in itself should be sufficient representation.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, the same should be done with a "Tall" option checkbox.
Everyone can be reasonably content with this, while the main game can be balanced around 4X principles.

I don't think a masochistic diversionary stress test is sufficient representation. The entire point of the OCC was that the game actively worked against that formula (hence the challenge). You play OCC because winning would be an achievement, not because it's a viable playstyle.

From a gameplay perspective, that means the game is narrowing the population of viable playstyles. Generally, in a game, would you rather 2 roles that you could play as or 5?

From a historical perspective, that means the game isn't acknowledging the variety of shapes that a successful civilization can take. It also diminishes the pool of plausible Civ inclusions; it's thematically obtuse to have a Venice, Switzerland or Papal State whose bonuses are supposed to help it sprawl across the continent.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Cities do raise the price of districts so if you have a massive amount of cities you may not afford to build districts and districts may be more important for your science and culture then your population which may mean that a large empire will be behind in science and culture due to lack of districts.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Cities do raise the price of districts so if you have a massive amount of cities you may not afford to build districts and districts may be more important for your science and culture then your population which may mean that a large empire will be behind in science and culture due to lack of districts.

Not cities themselves, but each district increases the cost. So you'll not have less districts with wide empires, you'll have the same, plus a bit more. You'll have less districts per city, though.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Not cities themselves, but each district increases the cost. So you'll not have less districts with wide empires, you'll have the same, plus a bit more. You'll have less districts per city, though.

Except for the fact that the city center is a district...so each city you build/conquer could increase the cost of new campuses/theater/holy site/harbor etc.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Except for the fact that the city center is a district...so each city you build/conquer could increase the cost of new campuses/theater/holy site/harbor etc.

I don't think it works that way. Could you confirm from the videos? As I understand, city center doesn't affect district cost.