Will Civ6 punish players for expansion?

[Redaxe]

A rough balance of power. Countries like the Netherlands or Belgium can exist because of the good will of other more powerful nations. Also, the more powerful nations do not wish for their rivals to take over the Netherlands or Belgium and gain an advantage over them.

This hasn't been modelled particularly well in Civ down through the years, to be honest.

Civ 5 actually didn't do too badly with this once you get Ideologies. A civ like the Netherlands or Belgium with only a couple of medium sized cities would actually survive quite well if everyone in the region followed the same ideology. If everyone in the region has identical ideologies, mutual declaration of friendships & friendly with neighbours etc, that is sufficient

But generally civs like Belgium are best represented as CityStates - they do offer a great possibility for a smaller civ to thrive based on citystate alliances.
After the 'Holy Roman Empire' functioned in this way - it wasn't a centralised entity but rather a loose coalition of allied citystates.
I hope that does remain a strategy in civ 6.

 

[stealth_nsk]

To make "tall" a viable alternative to "wide", the infrastructure/output of "tall" cities must be able to grow exponentially to compensate the exponential growth of going wide ... or the game needs to end soon enough before the exponential growth of wide becomes effective ...

I don't think tall should be as viable as wide. It's 4X game, the eXpand and eXterminate should give benefits. The main problem is - there are no alternatives to early expansion and that's not good. The should be other viable early game strategies.

 

[Ryika]

The way I see it "tall" as in "Focus more on growth than expansion, but don't disregard expansion" should be a valid strategy ONLY if you're lucky enough to get a good starting area, and with a good enough starting area it should be stronger than expansion-heavy strategies. Otherwise wide as in "Expand constantly, but not rapidly" should be dominant. That way a good player has to master both, and has to decide which strategy is appropriate for which starting area.

Tall as in "Build X Cities very early on and then don't expand for the rest of the game" should never be a top tier strategy, and wide as in "Rex as much as you can as early as you can" shouldn't either.

 

[historix69]

The point is expansion must have a penalty (and a fairly steep one) to balance the benefits(which are more the earlier you expand).

To make it a difficult trade off in the early game I would make settlers actually very expensive...have that expense increase the more settlers/cities you have, and possibly include something to encourage late settling (like the tech/civic idea)

You could also tune down the benefit of an early city (making it slower to grow for example)

I see a "penalty" as extra-costs which are added to the opportunity-costs of expanding ... the penalty will force players to adjust their play-style to the penalty-system ... the result will be like in Civ5 where the global-happiness forced AI to settle on stupid places near new luxuries and often prevented them from building a functional, strong nation/empire ...

If settlers become more expensive, conquest becomes more attractive ... if costs of settlers raise with number of cities, conquest becomes more attractive and the result will be that a nation with a large number of maybe 100 cities won't be able to settle a single city and can only rely on conquest ... nobody wants such a game ...

(Rise of Nations (RTS) had a system of linearly increasing costs for everything and number of settlers was limited to something like 8 ... on the other side a single game of RoN often was finished after 15-30 min (depending on your nations accumulated boni) so you cannot compare it)

I posted the map sizes of Civ5 in a recent post ... it is a huge difference if playing on a duel map or on huge/giant ... rules for expansion should be reasonable for all map sizes ... huge/giant has a lot more room for early expansion while a duel map has not ... One of the problems with National Wonders in Civ5 was that they do not scale well with bigger map size where players are intended to build more cities ... if a player doesn't want to build/conquer a lot of cities, he/she better plays on a smaller map ...

Civ5 boosted early expansion with Liberty (free Settler, +50% Settler-Production in Capital) and by providing a free, strong, build-in ranged city-attack which allowed to found new cities without guarding them ... I remember one of my 1st Civ1-games where I started, built a settler in my capital, founded my 2nd city and the very next turn a barbarian horseman destroyed it since it was undefended ... removing the boni for Settler-Production and reducing the city-defense and attack in Civ5 would increase opportunity-costs (settler, garrison) for expansion ...

Regarding the National Wonders in Civ5, I think it would have been a better design if they were simply tied to completing the Tradition-(Tall)-Tree instead of scaling costs with number of cities and having stupid requirements ... Liberty then would really represent the wide-tree and should be buffed with more per-city-boni to balance the game.
(Unfortunately buildings in Civ5 are tied only to opening a social policy tree, not finishing it.)

 

[Chinese American]

it doesn't matter if you can REX if everybody is doing it too. that's what makes the opening game fun. you're supposed to expand and explore in a true 4X game. the excitement to check out suitable spots for new cities, the fear of finding a barbarian or enemy warrior, archer, or horsemen is just around the corner, who can snatch your settler or defenseless city.

the problem in 5 it doesn't evoke any feeling. no joy or fear or excitement. well, it does feel claustrophobic. your borders stay the same for the entire game. there is no expansion phase. you don't even feel like the need or urge to expand. you stay huddled in your own areas for all 500 turns. (fending off barbarians for 500 turns.) it's a travesty to the series.

The true problem with older games was ICS. Theoretically you could build every building in every city, no matter how many tiles that city owned. However in VI, that strategy should be shackled with districts limiting what each city can build.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The ideal version would get rid of the settler altogther (until middle ages or so)

Rather, the map (at least the good terrain) would start out filled with cities and barbs, that you then made part of your empire either militarily or diploculturally. (They should probably be semimobile when first acquired..able to move 1-2 tiles before settling in their permanent position)
Upon acquistion they get renamed to your empire ..or start out with names from a nearby empires city list.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The ideal version would get rid of the settler altogther (until middle ages or so)

Rather, the map (at least the good terrain) would start out filled with cities and barbs, that you then made part of your empire either militarily or diploculturally. (They should probably be semimobile when first acquired..able to move 1-2 tiles before settling in their permanent position)
Upon acquistion they get renamed to your empire ..or start out with names from a nearby empires city list.

That's one of ideas floating around for a long time, but I'd say it would remove a lot of fun form the game. You know, when my wife plays civilization, whe calls me to help her "settle" and we discuss placement for a new city. It's quite huge part of the game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Thats why a newly acquired city (except from a major civ/CS) should be relocatable by 1-2 tiles(maybe 3).

 

[King Jason]

That's one of ideas floating around for a long time, but I'd say it would remove a lot of fun form the game. You know, when my wife plays civilization, whe calls me to help her "settle" and we discuss placement for a new city. It's quite huge part of the game.

Yea... this is a pretty fundamental aspect of the game, imo. I remember reading somewhere that the Strategic view of civ5 even stemmed from all of the "dotmap" threads that people would start that were created solely to discuss city placement and expansion options with other places.

Example:

Spoiler :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=544259&highlight=settle

Those kinds of threads were all over the place back when I was on the boards regularly while playing civ4. Settling is a huge part of the fun and strategy.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Lol, all I ever do is just be like AI and place my cities 3 tiles apart... Don't ask me why I've adopted this.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Lol, all I ever do is just be like AI and place my cities 3 tiles apart... Don't ask me why I've adopted this.

Civ6 has some surprise for you...

 

[historix69]

Lol, all I ever do is just be like AI and place my cities 3 tiles apart... Don't ask me why I've adopted this.

I think in the beginning of Civ5 the ingame-advisor often suggested to settle in 3 tiles distance ...

 

[qwerty25]

The ideal version would get rid of the settler altogther (until middle ages or so)

Rather, the map (at least the good terrain) would start out filled with cities and barbs, that you then made part of your empire either militarily or diploculturally. (They should probably be semimobile when first acquired..able to move 1-2 tiles before settling in their permanent position)
Upon acquistion they get renamed to your empire ..or start out with names from a nearby empires city list.

Perhaps cities everywhere would be a bit too much of an impediment? (assuming cities have the same strength as before) Why not more of a village, in-between a barbarian encampment and city.

When you "settle" your city you gain the population from the village and it turns into a farm/neighborhood. Just think of your city as a castle oppressing the nearby peasants. Of course you'll have to defeat the barbarian and the village first before being able to settle.

 

[Valmighty]

A rough balance of power. Countries like the Netherlands or Belgium can exist because of the good will of other more powerful nations. Also, the more powerful nations do not wish for their rivals to take over the Netherlands or Belgium and gain an advantage over them.

This hasn't been modelled particularly well in Civ down through the years, to be honest.

Thank you for the explanation guys.

But what i have in mind is not that small. Let's say the biggest countries in the world are Russia, USA, China, and Canada. In terms of military power, productivity, technology, they are not eclipsing the smaller countries like for instance England and France.

So in my understanding, England and France do exist NOT because of the good will of the stronger countries, because they also have great military power. If it's by colonies, it was centuries ago. I keep thinking they can be advanced in technology and economy because they join defense pact like NATO so they can neglect (or at least lower their budget) each of their military, but their military powers are also great.

Is it the number of the developed cities, not the land?

In real life it's done through diplomacy, which requires details not possible for computer game. It's not possible to keep realism here, so developers need to choose what part to abstract - artificial bonuses for small civs as in Civ5 or make small civs much less viable. The latter looks better for gameplay.

This makes more sense. How impossible is it? Diplomacy by joining military forces? Defensive pact?

 

[MIS]

Thank you for the explanation guys.

But what i have in mind is not that small. Let's say the biggest countries in the world are Russia, USA, China, and Canada. In terms of military power, productivity, technology, they are not eclipsing the smaller countries like for instance England and France.

So in my understanding, England and France do exist NOT because of the good will of the stronger countries, because they also have great military power. If it's by colonies, it was centuries ago. I keep thinking they can be advanced in technology and economy because they join defense pact like NATO so they can neglect (or at least lower their budget) each of their military, but their military powers are also great.

Is it the number of the developed cities, not the land?



This makes more sense. How impossible is it? Diplomacy by joining military forces? Defensive pact?

I disagree with this. 1. Most of Canada's land is worthless. 2. America absolutely eclipses UK economically, militarily, production wise etc. Why did England win WWI and WW2? (I'm English, by the way). Britain's whole economy is only 50% bigger than California's

 

[Nixalo]

About seeing the big picture, do you remember there's no global happiness here? Without it, there's no "tall" as having less cities gives no advantages to each individual city.

Tall is not halting and lowering your city growth by making a settler and working good tiles deadiler. I could see religious, science or culture civs going tall early as they can build and work good tiles earlier.

It all depends if having 7 medium cities is close to in power as 4 medium cities with 2 extra campuses, another holy site, and another encampment.

 

[Thormodr]

I disagree with this. 1. Most of Canada's land is worthless. 2. America absolutely eclipses UK economically, militarily, production wise etc. Why did England win WWI and WW2? (I'm English, by the way). Britain's whole economy is only 50% bigger than California's

A lot of Canada's land which is not viable for large cities is still mineral and resource rich. It is hardly worthless.

 

[master__jj]

The biggest problem is not REX but ICS, imho. The districts (and the limitations they bring) seem to solve this problem.

I do however hope they give the city states more power. It just doesn't feel logical that some civ's follow other rules than others. "Why don't you expand, Brussels, there's silk right next to you?" "Oh je suis desolé, I'm not allowed to." I know city states still exist today, but those are a result of history, not a deliberate choice. It doesn't feel natural...

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Civ6 has some surprise for you...

I know right. It's taking away my wonder-mongering it's taking away my defense system, it's taking away everything I knew, I'm going have to go back to Settler to learn Civ 6

I think in the beginning of Civ5 the ingame-advisor often suggested to settle in 3 tiles distance ...

Naah, I started doing it after I noticed AI does it. Don't ask me why the hell I tried to play as AI, maybe I wanted an even playing field so I dumbed my strategy down for them

 

[Ricci]

I think it is very safe to say, Yes.

To what extent however, there is no info on that. Prior to V expansion had very little downside and it felt they overcompensated a bit too much in V. There will be some tweaking (and local happiness is back already downplaying it) so it should swing back some but we will wait and see.

"... Prior to V expansion had very little downside and..." This I cannot live with. Civ4 (which I respectfully suspect you haven't played) had a pretty important downside with every city you founded, in terms of empire economy, especially the farther away from capitals it was located. The fact that smart locations made less punishing and/or earlier economic recovery choices was the key of succes for this crucial aspect of the game (you can even get some instant economic benefit from a new settlement gaining new happiness and health resounces for your core more developed cities).