"Land Power" & How Civ6 Could Be Different

[antisocialmunky]

Pretty much. If you want to see that in action, go buy Supreme Commander where you turn your exponentially growing economy into more exponentially growing economy...

[Catwalk]

I think to some extent the discussion is confusing big vs small with big vs weak. Currently, big pretty much means strong. The marginal profit of building new cities remains high throughout the game for experienced players, and the marginal profit of city development tends to lie below that of building new cities. A strong player will always be better than a weak player, as he should be. Weak players should have a hard time keeping up.

If you make city development more profitable (in various ways), then the opportunity cost of land grabbing goes up. You'll still want to expand lots, but the pace will go down. It may become more desirable to delay expansion in favour of development, seeking to protect your territorial claims through military might until you can settle it.

The big question is whether or not this makes the game any more interesting. I think it might.

[TheMapDownloader]

Here is somethin' to note about production...

In every civ game so far, units have hammer prices. A Horse Archer costs 50 hammers.

If I set all my cities to produce Horse Archers, and my total empire-wide production is 100 hammers per turn, you can predict that I will produce an average of 2 HA/turn over time.

Simple, right? But isn't there something interesting here? Notice that you didn't need to know how many cities I have, because Hammer Overflow evens everything out in the long term. Those 100 hammers/turn could be coming into five cities or fifteen, it doesn't matter. All you need to know is my civilization's total production.

If we imagine a world where every tile gives the same hammer yield, then the equation becomes even more simple:

Population ∝ Hammer income ∝ Production output

(∝ means directly proportional).

That is to say, a civilization with N population will produce exactly half as many Horse Archers per turn as one with 2N population.

Wow, now you can predict how many Horse Archers I will make just by knowing my population!

Now we see the incentive to expand. Early rapid expansion = lots of cities = higher midgame population (when cities start to hit growth caps) = higher production.

So here's the root of the problem. The game needs to divorce population and production. There really SHOULD BE only two game-purposes for increasing your population - expansion (more cities) and growth (bigger cities). These two priorities should be set at odds against a third priority, increasing your production. So you can make a city grow, you can make it pump out settlers, or you can increase its production, but you can't do two of these at the same time.

The purpose of horizontal expansion would be to claim valuable resources and city sites. The purpose of vertical city growth would be to unlock production options - for example you can only build cathedrals in cities of a certain size, etc. And the purpose of increasing production would be to allow you to produce buildings and units faster.

[Windsor]

If I set all my cities to produce Horse Archers, and my total empire-wide production is 100 hammers per turn, you can predict that I will produce an average of 2 HA/turn over time.

Well yes, assuming you don't whip, chop, rushbuy, rushbuild(GE), draft(not available on horse archers) or do something that changes your production(civics, techs, grow and so one). And assuming you are talking about final production, not base hammers.

However, over time isn't everything. Because if I manage to build 8 horse archers in my two cities while you still only got 1...

Simple, right? But isn't there something interesting here? Notice that you didn't need to know how many cities I have, because Hammer Overflow evens everything out in the long term. Those 100 hammers/turn could be coming into five cities or fifteen, it doesn't matter. All you need to know is my civilization's total production.

Well yes, but how is that interesting? That will always be the case. If I tell you that Fords total production is 13 699 cars/day you can quickly figure out that they will produce 5 million cars in a year. How many factories they have is irrelevant to the equation. Nothing shocking about this.

But number of cities ARE relevant. Because a two city empire will only have to invest 120 hammers into stables while a 10 city empire will have to pay 600 hammers and therefore they will produce roughly 10HAs less than the two city empire.

Wow, now you can predict how many Horse Archers I will make just by knowing my population!

When you reached that conclusion you have to realize something in between was wrong?

The problem is that you operate based on final production rather than raw tile yields. You also don't seem to appreciate all the strategy involved getting to that final production.

- The player has to chose which tiles he wants to claim, improve and work.
- Claiming tiles has a cost. You need to produce a settler and you'll pay increased maintenance. The maintenance makes population less effective. Say you want to claim a hill and mine it. To pay for the city you now need to also work a cottage. So even though you add +2pop you only get to work 1 additional mine.
- Production gets modified by buildings. 1 size 10 city with Heroic Epic is going to outproduce your 2 size 5 cities. Less cities means less hammers wasted on infrastructure.

Now we see the incentive to expand. Early rapid expansion = lots of cities = higher midgame population (when cities start to hit growth caps) = higher production.

Well, now you are getting closer. Growth caps. You quickly get forced to expand horizontally.

- There is a limited availability on happy and health buildings and they certainly cost a lot to build.
- Growth rate. Since city growth in Civ4 is 20+2*N it will become less attractive to grow a city the larger it gets. Changing this formula can quickly alter the balance between horizontal and vertical expansion. Just think what you would do if it was a constant(say 40).
- At the very early game it's also important that you can build workers and settlers with food. This allows you to work your most efficient tiles.

The game needs to divorce population and production. There really SHOULD BE only two game-purposes for increasing your population - expansion (more cities) and growth (bigger cities).

These two priorities should be set at odds against a third priority, increasing your production. So you can make a city grow, you can make it pump out settlers, or you can increase its production, but you can't do two of these at the same time.

I don't get this. You don't want growing a city to increase the production?


I'll have to make another reply to this thread regarding the 'problem' in general.

[chaunceymo]

So, the fundamental problem is that after a fairly brief period of time every city can be just as good as every other city, thus there's no reason to not have as many cities as you can manage.

What if this is not the case?

I loved the idea of cottages in Civ4, a land improvement that takes a long time to get better, but is more attractive to pillagers. I hated that Civ5 took away not just cottages but most meaningful choice in land improvements. Why not expand that mechanic?

Have "quick" improvements that go up as fast or faster than current ones, provide small bonuses that never improve, like subsistence farms or surface mines or trading posts. These can be built around any city. Have one or more higher tiers of improvements, like irrigation, shaft mines and cottages, that start out weaker than the quick improvements but slowly improve over time. Give cities the ability to either create "work crews" that are consumed on use but greatly speed up one of the slow terrain improvements, or allow them to forfeit their build queue entirely to speed up the terrain improvement(s).

This would give people a very meaningful choice in terms of city development. If they are cranking out settlers and a bare bones work force, they can make a bunch of little military outpost type cities to claim land but that will possibly never turn a profit and will be very vulnerable to culture flips. Or, they can play the slower game and sacrifice expansion for higher quality land improvement, allowing for vastly larger, more productive cities.

Trade routes should also be a lot more important. They are the reason that today we see Singapore, a tiny city-state with no natural resources, have a larger economy than Nigeria, which has many times the population and enormous oil reserves. Larger cities should be able to have more, and more valuable, trade routes, and the length of time the route has existed should heavily affect its worth. Peace bonuses to trade routes should also mean that civs that don't war should potentially get bonuses on par with those that do.

[Brian Shanahan]

Trade routes should also be a lot more important. They are the reason that today we see Singapore, a tiny city-state with no natural resources, have a larger economy than Nigeria, which has many times the population and enormous oil reserves

Actually Singapore doesn't have a larger economy than Nigeria. What Singapore has is a huge tax-evasion and fraud industry which makes it appear that its economy is larger than Nigeria's because a lot of money is being siphoned out of places like Nigera through Singapore and back to company head-offices (based usually around Europe and N. America) or into private bank accounts in Switzerland, Jersey or the Caymans belonging to the top men in the Nigerian curroptocracy.

There is no way that a small 6km2 city should ever (in game, or in real life) be economically stronger than a large country with many resources and a hard-working intelligent population of over 100m.

[antisocialmunky]

Singapore doesn't have a larger GDP...

And you're comparing apples and oranges. Apples being an economy based on resource extraction and oranges being banking and commerce.

[TheMapDownloader]

@Windsor, you're correct that the number of cities matters when we take city improvements into account. There are plenty of factors. Just to add one more to your pile how about Civ4 resources changing the construction time of certain projects (Marble with Heroic Epic for example). Any attempt to make a theory about the game is going to skim over details and make the game look a lot simpler than it is.

But from a very high / bird's eye view of the game you still have the principle that population is highly correlated with and proportional to final production. Bigger empire, more production. And with all else equal (like being skilled enough to develop your land as well as your neighbors) that means you win.

I don't get this. You don't want growing a city to increase the production?

As I see it you're getting too many things for free when you get a new population point. Your city can grow for free while you work on other projects, then when you grow you get a free pop point that can turn into a settler AND you get a free laborer that works a new tile and adds to your hammers per turn. It's so great that the best investment in the game is always population growth and the best investment to achieve that is (almost) always a new city.

Look, when you manage cities in Civ3 and to an extent Civ4, it's really along a simple line between two extremes.



The Settler Pump exists to produce Settlers in the early game and claim as much land as possible. A Settler Pump usually has an ideal small size, a few really good improved tiles, and maybe some crucial city improvements like granary.

The Citadel is a city that grows as fast as it can to the maximum happy size that it can and therefore is able to produce the maximum amount that the surrounding land can allow.

The long term goal is to get as many cities as possible and turn as many of them as possible into Citadels that are as huge as possible - in other words, to have the highest population and the most production, as already discussed.

What I am suggesting is more like this:



The Pump still exists to turn out lots of Settlers.

The Foundry is a city that invests to maximize its production capacity over time.

The Metropolis is a city that invests in growth, to gain access to the benefits of large city size such as high culture and influence, upper tier buildings and wonders, faster production speed with more workers, etc.

Civ conflates production capacity and speed into a single factor, price. It always costs 50 hammers to build a HA and you can pay that in one turn of 50 hammers or over 50 turns of 1 hammer.

[Tasunke]

One way that might help is to remove the National Wonder limit on cities ... FFH2 does this though my base game needs improvement so I honestly don't know how good a job FFH2 does of doing this (especially considering the extra, wildly imbalancing aspects of the game).

But what about a BTS with unlimited National Wonders? Plus, maybe Improvment ++'s which have a 3 limit or something, which work a bit better than your average market or library ... perhaps.

Especially if these "limited uniques" require a certain amount of mastery in different areas. Like a library limited UB requires scholarship mastry 4, and market limited UB requires wealth mastery 3.

And if you reach wealth mastery 3 and already have a regular market in place, you can replace it (sort of like replacing one power plant for another). Having to build it from ground up of course (or maybe a gold cost upgrade?).

As for unique units, perhaps if you build a certain number of military specialists in a city ... you can build an "advanced" form of the unit in that city. But not every unit gets advanced ... you have to pick which unit, you maybe get to add a new "UU" for every 6 levels of mastery.

And maybe certain UUs, like Swiss Mercenary, use cultural mastery or religious mastery instead (to unlock), units that can defend your culture cities, but are not very good at taking enemy cities.

Perhaps after scientific method, a certain level of Scientific mastery can allow you to build "Experimentals" which are limited UUs for late-game units. (instead of being limited in location of production, they are limited in total number).

Early game, religious mastery could have policy influence, and then "fuse/synergy" with cultural mastery in the late game .... while Political mastery could have minor wealth and culture benefits in the early game and be a major policy influencer in the late game.


Alternatively ... masteries could be less (you get one each 10 turns) and more like a slow-moving slider a la Europa Universalis.

(where each 10% shift of the slider causes a turn or so of anarchy, for instance)

for instance one slider could be Scholarship vs Religious, another could be Cultural vs Wealth, another could be Political vs Military, another could be Land vs Sea, etc.

[Bigger]

I would just like to point out that the "mastery" concept has already been implemented, and fairly recently, in the "civilization: colonization" remake. Kind of shocked no one has pointed that out yet, but I know it wasn't that popular. It really did have the effect OP claims it would - it is much more efficient and easier to win with 3-5 bases than 10 bases in that game (especially if you plan to revolt from Europe and not just win a score\time victory). An expert Fisherman is so much better than a citizen working fish - to the point you're better off putting an expert fisherman on a resourceless sea tile than making another city to put a regular citizen on an ocean tile with fish. same with lumberjacks, politicians, tobacconists, etc. It becomes so increasingly hard to get more "masters" with time that it is just about impossible to populate more than 6 cities with them, and very difficult to do so with more than 4 cities.

Now whether that is more "fun" is a different story. I don't think anyone enjoys that game more than Civ 4, even tho it uses the same engine.

I do think a lot more fun solution is in the RFC mod, and the various modmods that come with it (specifically the RFC-rand, which allows random maps.. there is also a multiplayer modmod, although I havent tried it). It makles more sense historically, too - venice would never really be able to defeat mongolia - but once mongolia collapsed from instability caused by overexpansion - Venice didn't look too bad <g>

Adding a stability mechanic (that can be turned on and off in custom games) is much easier than anything ya'll are proposing, imho. And probably more fun too