It's a reaction to the ICS problems of days of yore.
If a setter/worker cost one pop (r doesn't cost a pop iirc in CivII), and a city size one works two tiles (the city tile and one other) than barring other barriers there's no reason to ever do anything other than just make another city right next to another over and over and over and over and over . . .
Everything since has been finding a way to clamp down on that, and I don't think there will ever be consensus on the best way to do it.
It's a reaction to the ICS problems of days of yore.
If a setter/worker cost one pop (r doesn't cost a pop iirc in CivII), and a city size one works two tiles (the city tile and one other) than barring other barriers there's no reason to ever do anything other than just make another city right next to another over and over and over and over and over . . .
Everything since has been finding a way to clamp down on that, and I don't think there will ever be consensus on the best way to do it.
On another note, forget spamming cities. Let's do away with spamming districts. I hope the "many paths to victory" canard is revisited. "Many paths" means pick one early and beeline. And with the way civ's are designed now, the choice is often made for the player. An empire filled with rich diversity is a newb's move. Maybe get rid of all these hyperspecialized conditions. I s'pose Domination always has a place tho, last man standing and all that.
Era score represents a solid basis for a victory condition. First player to hit a certain score wins.
Why are there always these weird complaints about city spam? The number of cities is limited by the map, and that's how it should be. You can settle further apart for more tiles, or closer together for more cities.
I don't want to be arbitrarily limited because of something that people randomly decided is an issue despite no one ever explaining why it would be an issue.
It's an issue because the game pace is affected by all factions, not just yours. Aside from the micromanaging tedium, city spam leads to snowballing which is awful in and of itself for the player because it kills the challenge and fun of the game, but even if I "choose" not to snowball with city spam myself, someone else does and that ripples throughout the entire game. In Civ VI in particular, it makes eras go by faster, affects barbarian units, etc.
Another thing is it hurts the game performance. It's simply unavoidable that more cities is harder on your computer. So again, even though I myself may choose to hurt myself and not settle more cities (even though I don't get why anyone would do that when the game rewards you nonstop for settling...), when the AI spams their cities, it literally affects my experience directly.
Yes, I agree there needs to be some mechanism for handling city spam. However, the region system is a ham-fisted way of doing it. Expansion needs to be managed by the player, not by the map.
I don't know why 4X games impose hard caps for things like settles or fleet size. Instead of a hard cap, give the civ a rating and if they exceed it they start to experience strain in the form of lowered efficiency and negative events. Granted, we see that penalizing system sometimes in 4X games. However, the other thing to do (that we don't see often) is to provide benefits for staying below the rating. Now it's not simply a limiter. Now there are choices for the player where expansion isn't constant and rampant. It more likely transpires in managed, thoughtful waves.
Regions are not hamfisted. It's actually quite elegantly executed in Humankind. It doesn't feel arbitrary at all--it really does feel organic and it makes settling a much more impactful choice. I'd much rather have the limitations be on the map itself rather than having gameplay systems that totally punish expansion (like Civ 5 did). THAT felt hamfisted and was a hard cap in everything but name.
And again, I'd like to see a philosophy that doesn't presume every settle should bloom into a metropolis. I sometimes settle to grab a resource or two. And in games other than Civ, I might settle defensively to create a choke point. Can't do that in these one-per-region systems.
Humankind's region system doesn't presume that - in fact, you're able to combine settlements from adjacent regions into metropoles. I think it's a really cool mechanic and interesting approach to tall vs wide. So this is another point in favor of a region system.
Humankind on the other hand has a better region system than OldWorld, but for some reason, the regions and Cities in Humankind kinda make the Map (no matter the size) feel small to me, so I don't have a feeling of exploring an unknown area where I don't know what I will encounter there. The borders are set and never-changing. So, it makes exploration less fun to me, where in Civ Borders are constantly changing, Cities get razed and new ones settled throughout the whole game. And another thing that impairs at the cost of regions is colonialism. If you have complete control over a region once you settle a city in it, there is no feeling of colonizing the territory.
I completely disagree. The map doesn't feel small at all to me. In fact it feels bigger since districts create a massive sprawl effect. The limitations of regions actually promote MORE excitement to me because I know there aren't infinite places to settle, so I get excited to find new territories and excited to plan where in those territories I'll settle.
And it's far from being unbalanced, so we don't necessarilly need a region system in Civ.
Nah, both Civ IV and Civ VI have perfectly serviceable systems.
Nothing will ever be perfect, and they should absolutely continue tinkering, but that doesn't mean ICS is an issue. It isn't. My expansion is already not limited by available land, it's limited by settler costs and amenities.
It's an issue because the game pace is affected by all factions, not just yours. Aside from the micromanaging tedium, city spam leads to snowballing which is awful in and of itself for the player because it kills the challenge and fun of the game, but even if I "choose" not to snowball with city spam myself, someone else does and that ripples throughout the entire game. In Civ VI in particular, it makes eras go by faster, affects barbarian units, etc.
Another thing is it hurts the game performance. It's simply unavoidable that more cities is harder on your computer. So again, even though I myself may choose to hurt myself and not settle more cities (even though I don't get why anyone would do that when the game rewards you nonstop for settling...), when the AI spams their cities, it literally affects my experience directly.
Again, if you're having more cities on the map than you'd want for whatever reason (including performance issues), the solution is playing on a smaller map. If empires are too big for your liking, the solution is adding more civs.
Pick a game setup that gives the gameplay you want.
Also, I don't know about lower difficulty levels, but on Deity every era except the Ancient Era is guaranteed 40 turns long exactly, so that's a non-factor in my experience. Can't say for sure about barbarians, usually I don't have an issue with them and often I turn them off anyway because they harm the AI more than the player, and the AI needs every small benefit it can get.
You act like the opportunity cost of building a 400+ production settler and losing amenities is always worth it.
While on the long term there are practically no drawbacks to having more cities (thank god; Civ V has shown us what a horror it is otherwise), I often find myself still settling in the Industrial or even Modern era to actually reach the point where every good available spot is settled. And then I'm not even talking about the time those cities require to get going with scaling district costs. Which I made an entire separate post about that I won't repeat in it's entirety here.
I hope we get that final patch sometime in the summer, but I don't expect Civ 7 anytime soon.
Edit: aaaaaaaaand for the love of God, just make the persona pack available on steam for purchase! I'm getting nervous that I might never actually complete the collection
It's an issue because the game pace is affected by all factions, not just yours. Aside from the micromanaging tedium, city spam leads to snowballing which is awful in and of itself for the player because it kills the challenge and fun of the game, but even if I "choose" not to snowball with city spam myself, someone else does and that ripples throughout the entire game. In Civ VI in particular, it makes eras go by faster, affects barbarian units, etc.
Another thing is it hurts the game performance. It's simply unavoidable that more cities is harder on your computer. So again, even though I myself may choose to hurt myself and not settle more cities (even though I don't get why anyone would do that when the game rewards you nonstop for settling...), when the AI spams their cities, it literally affects my experience directly.
While I agree that the City spam may lead to snowballing, performance issues and sometimes frustration because of the AI settling behavior, I don't think that the solution is necessarilly a Region System. Rather, we should take a closer look at the Issue, and reconsider the effectiveness of previous efforts of resolving it:
- Is Civ VI still suffering from the same ICS problem that previous games suffered from? if yes, is it still a big issue or did we solve some of the drawbacks? what are the Issues of ICS that we're still experiencing? IMO we still kinda still have that issue, but not to the same degree as previously.
- The Issue in Civ VI of more cities = more profits, mainly comes from the opposite extreme to the Civ V solution on fixing city spam and snowballing: the Game is designed around awarding having more Cities, especially with Districts in play. And we all know how the Game practically discourages tall play. So, improving the tall play and balancing wide v tall would be a big step in solving the problem, and it wouldn't need much work to do that (not as much as if you redesign the whole game around a regions system). You can always balance that, the question is only "how?". Civ V making a bad job at that with the optimal strategy of 4 Cities doesn't mean that it's the norm and that there are no other options. IMO refinening and improving the Loyalty system in Civ VI could perhaps be another way to fixing city spam at least.
- I find the AI spamming Cities everywhere an issue that is mostly experienced on higher difficulties, where the AI gets free settlers, so it always has that advantage that helps the AI civs to snowball and to send settler after settler to settle new cities. Solution: give other bonuses to the AI, or have a limit on how many settlemets you can have and crossing that limit may either be impossible or entail other consequences in a way like suggested here by Steveg700 (and I really like this, and think it could make for a far better gameplay):
I don't know why 4X games impose hard caps for things like settles or fleet size. Instead of a hard cap, give the civ a rating and if they exceed it they start to experience strain in the form of lowered efficiency and negative events. Granted, we see that penalizing system sometimes in 4X games. However, the other thing to do (that we don't see often) is to provide benefits for staying below the rating. Now it's not simply a limiter. Now there are choices for the player where expansion isn't constant and rampant. It more likely transpires in managed, thoughtful waves.
On the other hand, I think the reason why the Region System in Humankind works good, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is also due to how cities work and not just because that the Regions themselves are what solve the ICS issue. And by that I mean how placing Districts immediately work the Tiles and provide their yields without needing any specialists/workers, so the regions are organically balanced with each other in a way, with only population specialists giving extra yields. And I don't think we will get those changes in a Civ title any time soon, and I wouldn't welcome it tbh. I much rather see some significant improvements to (District) specialists than having tiles automatically worked without any management (tbt, I'm the city/empire builder type of player, so I enjoy that kind of play, but others may have another opinion).
I completely disagree. The map doesn't feel small at all to me. In fact it feels bigger since districts create a massive sprawl effect. The limitations of regions actually promote MORE excitement to me because I know there aren't infinite places to settle, so I get excited to find new territories and excited to plan where in those territories I'll settle.
I think it's likely we will have a next civ but it might take a while, it might be this year but it might be 2024 as well, personally i'd lean towards late 2023.
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