Would a faster border growth speed be better?

[Tomice]

Simple question:
As far as I could see now, city borders grow very slow, resulting in gaps between cities even in the lategame.

It would clearly look better (realismwise) to me if the borders closed somewhen at the end of the medieval era approximately, but would it help gameplay?

I would love to give you my opinion, but I'm unsure.

 

[Chiyochan]

I'd give it a big fat yes, border growth is atrocious.

 

[Slowpoke]

yeah faster bordegrowth would be better, especially considering how oddly the border expansion choices are sometimes.

 

[Abremms]

I've been trying to rig it so borders grow faster as the ages progress (also trying to make happyness per luxury increase per era), but so far no luck.

what i WANT to do is for the ancient era to be as it is now, and for the culture cost for each new tile to decrease by 10% per era, so that by the time you hit the modern era, you get tiles twice as fast (tiles cost half as much). If only i could get the mechanic to work in the first place >.<

 

[QES]

Something like that and how to fix culture is being discussed here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9734601&postcount=20

Basically, tile-acquisition could be a flat rate. Which early on would be hard to get with the culture available to civs. But later, culture heavy civs could have extensive boarders. This would mean money would be the more likely method of getting tiles early, and culture would be the method later.

 

[Tomice]

You go very far in your proposed change, QES.

Your idea of cities not shooting but units losing 1hp every turn in enemy land seems LESS fun to me, but this thread is not about changes to combat.

Generally, I'm most concerned with the blocking of viable settling place, if we increase border growth by a lot. On the other hand, if we don't exagerate, I doubt it will be a problem. It would somewhat increase the benefit for those who settled in an area first, which seems ok to me.

The combat bonuses you get in friendly territory would finally mean something, and if the AI took those SPs, they would possibly be less of a pushover. But I don't know how the AI chooses SPs. They may ignore this. Overall, it seems that the AI lacks in defensive skills anyway. Weaker AI civs are exterminated very often and very early.

I agree with you that faster border growth would make culture buildings more viable in contested areas, but you would need less of them in the center of your empire! In fact, when all tiles are acquired, they may lose their value completely.

 

[Abremms]

You go very far in your proposed change, QES.

Your idea of cities not shooting but units losing 1hp every turn in enemy land seems LESS fun to me, but this thread is not about changes to combat.

Generally, I'm most concerned with the blocking of viable settling place, if we increase border growth by a lot. On the other hand, if we don't exagerate, I doubt it will be a problem. It would somewhat increase the benefit for those who settled in an area first, which seems ok to me.

The combat bonuses you get in friendly territory would finally mean something, and if the AI took those SPs, they would possibly be less of a pushover. But I don't know how the AI chooses SPs. They may ignore this. Overall, it seems that the AI lacks in defensive skills anyway. Weaker AI civs are exterminated very often and very early.

I agree with you that faster border growth would make culture buildings more viable in contested areas, but you would need less of them in the center of your empire! In fact, when all tiles are acquired, they may lose their value completely.

AI will deffinatly take those SPs. not sure on the why or how, but i just had a rough fight against Japan with +33% for fighting in his own territory. it cost me dearly to break his army.

 

[Pazyryk]

My opinion is that the spread is absolutely perfect as it is now up through medieval. I would like to see borders start to close up in renaissance and industrial era, and for sure by modern. However, I would really hate to loose the unclaimed areas and the interesting land competition that occur in the early eras. I prefer it very much to civ4's borders that fill up quickly but then ebb and flow with temples, theaters and such (I never understood why the US would give up northern Washington state just because Vancouver has a really great cultural scene). So anything you do I hope it is targeted to mid- to late-game rather than early. (Maybe allow cheaper land buys at certain techs like Civil Service, Education and Railroads.)