Wild Speculation - Colonization Beeline

[MIS]

Based on what we've seen so far, am I the only one thinking Colonization (Economic Policy; +50% to settler production) is game-changing, and will be the optimum strategy in pretty much every game? Every government has an economic slot, and expansion should be the first focus (after some exploration to find the best sites) in pretty much every game. Thoughts welcome.

 

[AriochIV]

Someone stab this man.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

I agree, and the existence of this policy makes me worry that the maps will be small (it would then be balanced by only being usable for a short while). Otherwise it beats me why anyone would pick +1 production for their cities when they could have this bonus... Hopefully the numbers will be tweaked before release to make it slightly less ridiculous. We don't need another Tradition when the policy system seems otherwise more open to choice and greatly improved (imo).

 

[Thormodr]

Seems pretty powerful. Wait and see, I guess.

 

[MIS]

Someone stab this man.

Ouch.

Care to explain why OP was so offensive? Two others so far found it reasonable enough to respond to.

 

[Amrunril]

Maybe, but, as you say, its wild speculation. Civ V has a social policy that increases settler production by 50% and gives a free settler, and its still considered an inferior choice with the current game balance. It's possible that a settler production bonus will be excessively powerful in Civ VI, but its equally possible that factors other than actual settler construction will limit early expansion, or that early expansion will be so strong that you want to have many of your cities founded before its even possible to get this policy.

 

[MIS]

Maybe, but, as you say, its wild speculation. Civ V has a social policy that increases settler production by 50% and gives a free settler, and its still considered an inferior choice with the current game balance. It's possible that a settler production bonus will be excessively powerful in Civ VI, but its equally possible that factors other than actual settler construction will limit early expansion, or that early expansion will be so strong that you want to have many of your cities founded before its even possible to get this policy.

That's all possible. I disagree that the Civ5 policy is an inferior choice; it's part of an inferior tree. That's not a consideration here, since you'll be getting it eventually however you play.

 

[m15a]

Or maybe you'll just use it every game. There's nothing wrong with that. You still have to decide when to use it.

It would be a problem if it was always advantageous to build settlers, but that's a problem in itself (and it's name is ICS).

(Edit: deleted stuff I misremembered)

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Settlers did take only 6 turns to build in the gameplay video (while Builders took 3 and early military units 1-2 turns). I suspect the game was on Quick speed, but in any case the units will be cheaper than in Civ V.

Thing is, though, that the other bonuses seem so lame in comparison that I can see no reason to pick them over this one. Perhaps if the policy is available through a dead-end tech in the tech or culture tree then it could be properly balanced (although probably still optimal in many cases, given how powerful cities are in Civ, since they grant you literally everything else).

 

[bite]

Just remember the game is still being a long way from having its final balance so many of these might change

 

[Ivan Hunger]

Seems like all the Economy Policies shown in the video are good in different situations.

If you find a Natural Wonder and a neighboring civ very early in the game, you're going to get the eureka unlocks on the techs that give you the campus and holy site districts very early. That might make Meritocracy an attractive choice.

If someone forward-settles near your capital, you might want to grab Land Surveyors so you can gobble up all the good tiles between your city and his before he does.

If you find that a lot of rival civs are sending trade routes to your cities, you can get Caravansaries and make bank. Why build settlers when you can just buy them?

Land isn't the only thing civs have to compete over. If you want to wonder spam, Urban Planning will help you with that.

And if the territory around your capital just sucks, you might decide it would better to go with the old self-imposed one city challenge for a while. In that case, you might as well grab God King.

 

[Jamadman]

We also do not know what time frame it is to swap these policies around.

You don't need to pick it and be left with it the whole game. you can swap it for something else when you stop building settlements. So it might be really good earlier on but late game you can just swap it out.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

We also do not know what time frame it is to swap these policies around.

You don't need to pick it and be left with it the whole game. you can swap it for something else when you stop building settlements. So it might be really good earlier on but late game you can just swap it out.

You can swap policies for free whenever you get a Civic and for a fee at any other time.

 

[MIS]

Just remember the game is still being a long way from having its final balance so many of these might change

Understood - which is why I called it "wild speculation", but it does seem overly powerful based on what we know.

 

[King Jason]

Based on what we've seen so far, am I the only one thinking Colonization (Economic Policy; +50% to settler production) is game-changing, and will be the optimum strategy in pretty much every game? Every government has an economic slot, and expansion should be the first focus (after some exploration to find the best sites) in pretty much every game. Thoughts welcome.

You're insinuating that settler-spam is an optimal strategy, which certainly wasn't the case in civ5. I dispel the notion that the +50% settler production was a good policy in a bad tree. In fact, if I could only choose one policy to run from that tree, that would be far from my first pick.

Understood - which is why I called it "wild speculation", but it does seem overly powerful based on what we know.

Considering that we know nothing - no, it doesn't. You ask why someone would pick +1 production in all of their cities over this? Well for starters your ignoring yields entirely. Now, Xian in that video displays a production of 5, which we can't be certain is an accurate depiction of a real game... but since you want to do the "what we know" approach. 50% of 5 is 2.5, so yes that is better than +1. But what if you have 2 or more cities?

You need to consider the empire you're dealing with. I can't hardly remember any game of civ since civ4 at least where I've bothered to build more than 1 settler at any given moment. If I have 3 or 4 cities, I'm not going to build 3 or 4 settlers all at once.

Later in the game, the city has a production value of 11. So you can have a 50% bonus to settlers, or about a 10% bonus (in that city) to any production; that same bonus applied to all other cities, but the % changes depending on the yields. So if you have a newly constructed city that let's say has about 3 production, that +1 is now a 33% increase to all builds.

33% to all builds seems stronger than 50% to settlers. Furthermore, your 50% settler bonus is utterly wasted any moment that you aren't constructing a settler. So for every turn you aren't building a settler you're suffering lost production.

So in an empire of 4 cities, where your capital has 11 production, Building a settler in the capital nets +5.5 production per turn. For every turn you build a settler in your capital, and nowhere else, so compared to Urban planning you're losing 3 production per turn across the empire . If you had Urban Planning instead of colonization, sure, you're losing 4.5 production toward the settler, but in terms of bonus production generated across the empire you've gone from 5.5 (for just one build) to 4, so you're really only losing 1.5 production toward everything you're trying to accomplish from your empire in that timeframe. Such as say, constructing a settler, a district, a builder, and a military unit.

I'll end this theory-crafting by emphasizing again that you're literally losing gains every turn any time you're not building a settler. The opportunity costs of this civic are not easy to measure, at all. Certainly not in a manner to declare it overpowered.

Of the economic civics, land surveyors seems to be the only potentially weak one.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

Another benefit to land surveyors is district placement. Being able to buy a tile can mean the difference between putting your Campus in a +2 science spot or a +4 science spot.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

@King_Jason: You've been registered on the forums since 2005, so presumably you've played the Civ games that came out before Civ V. Up until Civ III, settler spam throughout the game was a viable strategy; while those days likely won't ever come back, the devs have implied that we can have bigger empires this time around (removing global happiness; small but viable tundra and desert cities). So, at least in the early game Settlers will likely be very important. It could be that you'll eventually want to switch away from Colonization; but the point is, if you will use it in every game before that point, why even have any other early policies in the game? We all know that early game benefits snowball in a huge way in the Civ series; in your otherwise sound analysis above, you discount the vast benefit that is gained by founding your first ~5 cities 50 % earlier, as compared to someone who settles for a meager +1 production in their ~5 cities that come online that much later. You will gain increased science, culture, gold, etc from those cities... Not just production. Not to mention making it first to potential city sites before competing AIs -- a benefit which may win you the whole game under certain conditions.

Thus, imo Colonization is inherently superior (always wanted to use that phrase! ) to all other policies as it stands, based on what we know of past Civ games and the devs' implications for Civ VI so far. Granted that they could reveal info at any minute that would totally flip the table, hence, wild speculation.

 

[King Jason]

Taking another quick glance at the video; that newly settled city had 1 production. So +1 to all cities would mean a 100% bonus to all production in that city, not just a settler... which I'm pretty sure wouldn't be the first build in a newly created city pretty much ever. Sounds way better than +50% to settlers to me.

Analyzing the information further (which is pointless because there's no guarantee these numbers are solid, but hey - boredom) growth for that is in 4 turns, so it's at least a 100% bonus for 4 turns, with diminishing effects after. For example if working a forest at pop 2 adds 1-2 production, the civic yield drops to to 50%-30%. But then you need to look at growth even furth than that because you could be looking 10+ turns of being anywhere from a 33-100% bonus to city production in a city that will probably never build a settler in those 10-20 turns, if it ever does.

As to the person who posted above me, We do not yet know the costs of expansion. So this theory-crafting is really like trying to fight in the dark. Yes, civ1-3 ICS was the way to go. Those games also didn't really have anything remotely close to the civics and policy systems within their government systems. So yes, if this were civ3, I'd be concerned about balance.

It's not. So I'm not. I doubt ICS is making a comeback. Civ5 may have dialed the anti-expansion knob too far, so when the devs mention that they've dialed it back a bit, I highly doubt that means settler spam is back.

One last edit:

It could be that you'll eventually want to switch away from Colonization; but the point is, if you will use it in every game before that point, why even have any other early policies in the game?

This is assuming you have a slew of options to start from anyway. We know that one of the earlier civics is Empire building, which comes with two economic policies for you to choose from. If we assume that it's colonization and whatever other one, perhaps the general assumption is that you're going to run colonization most the the time early anyway.

The system is designed to give the players choice, for sure; but at the same time, you have to start somewhere; the first civic cards you unlock will always be the ones you play first... because it's the start of the game. You're not going to have 10 different economic options on turn 15.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

In Civ II (and III iirc) a Settler was often the first build in a new city. I've played a lot of Civ II lately, so maybe I'm biased by the specter of nostalgia. Anyway, I just realized that it's pretty pointless to argue about this as of yet, as we don't know which techs (or rather cultural advances) will enable either of the policies (or any others for that matter). It could be that Colonization is only available later on, or is enabled by a dead-end tech to balance it out (you will lose wonders etc if you go after faster Settlers). The best I can say is that it seems overpowered at this point.

If both were available at game start, though, I can say that I'd pick Urban Whatever at the very start (to make a few units to scout out the territory and wait for the capital to grow to size 3 or so), then switch to Colonization and spam Settlers from every city until I either ran into neighboring civs, settled every possible spot or ran into some other limitation (city maintenance or the like). Then I'd switch to something else, consolidate my new holdings (typically a whole continent) and spam out science buildings and wonders. It's been the winning strategy in every Civ game so far apart from V (which suffered greatly from it, imo), and I'll be sad if it isn't in Civ VI. It just doesn't need a policy to help it, or at least there should be a significant opportunity cost to it.

 

[stealth_nsk]

There's nothing bad in settler spam itself, it's bad if it's the only viable strategy (as any other strategy). We've seen a lot of things which benefit from going wide as fast as possible, but didn't see enough bonuses from restraining early expansion so far. This part is worrying.