Civilization 5 Announced

[Adlain]

For my pennies worth, i am enjoying the game.
- i like the fact that i have started off winning as apposed to when i started Civ 4 i was horse whipped back to warlord quick sharp before i started picking up the basics and getting somewhere
- but that is also a shame with the game, it is prehaps too quick to reward some styles of play over others, throw money at your city states and you turn your civilisation into a tech powerhouse with a library early on. couple that to keeping it tight city (3-4 tops) wise untill you unlock Piety and or Patronage alongside Mathmatics and your set for stomping your least favoured neighbor, puppeting the citys as you conqour them and annexing one at a time as your happyness allows/ courthouses/circus/colosseums are built in previous conquests. Oh, and conquring Russia, Germany and the ottomans (16+ cities) with a total of 2 Muskets (eventuly upgraded to infantry) and a cannon with 2 ships helping out in the last 3-4 cities cannot be good even for Prince Japan.

[Sirian]

I forget, what are the details exactly of fishing villages?

The core concept is being able to do something productive with subpar lands. In Civ3, this meant desert locations (not able to grow much until Railroads brought in the 2-food tile), heavy hills/mountains locations, and spots along the coast up in the ice or in your core empire but where your settlement pattern left some unused tiles outside the fat crosses of major cities. The fishing village itself would be a very low production city, not able to build much, usually supported with surplus troops, workers from the rest of your empire, but able to bring in more commerce off the sea (where there were no shields to be had).

I coined the term, and I used it as a metaphor for all subpar cities. But in Civ4, these cities always do more economic harm than good, so you have little choice but to pass over a site that, in itself, could provide a marginal benefit, but cannot provide a net benefit to your empire.

The only down side to a fishing village in Civ3 was if it was too close to your capital, it could jump the line in the corruption queue and have a small negative impact on all cities farther from the capital than it.


Civ5 offers the promise of bringing back the fishing village, when it comes to the happiness system: each city only consumes as much happiness as it has population, so this seems to offer the option to settle purposely in spots where the city isn't going to grow very large. But Civ5 renders the concept unfeasible when you suffer increased Policy costs and other penalties for increasing your city count, once again making it a net negative to settle a city of this type (unless it's on critical resources).


My wife played a complete game of Civ5 last night on Warlord, attempting to go for the 3-city achievement with India, which is the "taller not wider" Civ, based on its unique abilities. But it seems her small city count made for unsustainable gold income vs her ever-inflating unit maintenance costs and her gradually increasing improvement maintenance costs. She was DOWed by one civ after another, who would go for long stretches never able to kill a single one of her increasingly-promoted units, but not willing to stop and make peace. Perhaps they saw her small city count and small unit count as "weakness" but that's problematic when the game holds up a Civ specifically designed to have few cities. She ran Wealth, but the costs eventually started disbanding her units.

This is a casual, non-veteran player running afoul of severe balance problems in the late game. I put more weight on that, currently, than I do on my own experiences, as this is exactly the type of player (new to the series, for the most part) that the game is supposed to be appealing to. But she was pretty frustrated by the corner the game's economy boxed her in to, in a scenario that the Steam Achievements suggest ought to be well playable. Mission NOT accomplished, on the economic balance front. And this is not on high difficulty, either. She had an army of seven units, and the game is basically telling her that was too many? At the same time that the AIs seem to be indicating they smell weakness in her small city and unit counts.

The golden ages are too readily available. Back in Civ3 you got ONE, and you couldn't always time it, because it was based off your UU.

So right there I am looking at two serious economic imbalances, and these are not looking like they will lend to simple tweaks. If I do try to mod the game, I think I will end up making some radical changes: not the kinds of changes I would expect could gain approval for an official patch. Maybe I will start simple, with a small list of modifications. If I had some people willing to test as I go, I might be able to get somewhere.


- Sirian

[Sullla]

I coined the term, and I used it as a metaphor for all subpar cities. But in Civ4, these cities always do more economic harm than good, so you have little choice but to pass over a site that, in itself, could provide a marginal benefit, but cannot provide a net benefit to your empire.

Just one quick comment on this, apologies for going off on a tangent. Is this really true? I always found that any coastal city location with a food resource (fish, clams, crabs) was worth founding, even if the land was entirely locked in ice and tundra. Whipping covers production, and coastal tiles give you enough income to break-even on costs in the majority of situations. I wasn't of the impression that Civ4 had killed these kind of cities - am I missing something?

Deeply sorry to hear of your wife's game, Sirian. That's been my experience as well: can't build more cities because of happiness limit, can't build more units because of support costs, can't add more buildings or you go bankrupt. It's problematic, to say the least.

[ThERat]

@Sulla,

I understand your point of view, playing the game should be first and foremost fun, if nothing else. I can also see where you are coming from when you talk about 'unfun' game elements.

I am playing an AW game on emperor and boy, it is tough. Just to clear my own continent took my until 1750AD as the AI plants cities everywhere and one is constantly battling the issue of happiness and maintenance.

I can see that the game is getting a little one dimensional. Maybe Sirian can really come up with a proper mod. Something has to be done about the whole balance.

[v8mark]

Just one quick comment on this, apologies for going off on a tangent. Is this really true? I always found that any coastal city location with a food resource (fish, clams, crabs) was worth founding, even if the land was entirely locked in ice and tundra. Whipping covers production, and coastal tiles give you enough income to break-even on costs in the majority of situations. I wasn't of the impression that Civ4 had killed these kind of cities - am I missing something?

I was going to say exactly this. I can't count the number of times when, in the modern era, I've patted myself on the back for founding a city that, on the face of it, wasn't much use, but had managed to grow to size 12-13 on the basis of a couple of grassland farms and coastal tiles, and was now pulling 50-60 beakers per turn, thus making a valuable contribution. I think fishing villages are very much part of Civ4...

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Why dont you just hexedit the save like described in post 61 of the 2nd thread you listed?

Is this really something I should have to do? I don't know anything about editing software, and I have to download a program to do it? I probably will try it, just to see if it works, but that is ABSURD.

I always found that any coastal city location with a food resource (fish, clams, crabs) was worth founding, even if the land was entirely locked in ice and tundra. Whipping covers production, and coastal tiles give you enough income to break-even on costs in the majority of situations. I wasn't of the impression that Civ4 had killed these kind of cities - am I missing something?

I was going to say something earlier when Sirian expressed the POV that fishing villages were dead in Civ IV, but since I didn't play Civ III, I don't figure I was the proper messenger. But I love to found cities on a one tile island off the coast of my empire, whip a lighthouse, and build it up. Especially if it isn't far from my capital or if I am in State Property.

[T-hawk]

Just one quick comment on this, apologies for going off on a tangent. Is this really true? I always found that any coastal city location with a food resource (fish, clams, crabs) was worth founding, even if the land was entirely locked in ice and tundra. Whipping covers production, and coastal tiles give you enough income to break-even on costs in the majority of situations. I wasn't of the impression that Civ4 had killed these kind of cities - am I missing something?

"One food resource" is the missing part. Sirian means truly marginal locations: no resources, maybe even no fresh water for irrigation, just the sea and the city center square. +6 food surplus from one fish makes for a dramatically different growth curve than these locations. We have yet to discover a set of game mechanics that makes these cities worthwhile but that does not also make worthwhile a city with few workable tiles because it is built densely among other cities. (It's also worth noting that Sirian's preference does not represent a universal Platonic ideal for Civ. Supporting fishing villages well is not necessarily an overall positive for every player's experience.)

And Civ 4 cities cost a lot more than face value. The city screen showing -6 gold for maintenance looks cheap. Every additional city raised the number-of-cities costs for every other city, distributing an impact of 10 or more gold. The new city costs civic upkeep, which grows as the city grows. It also incurs cost in the form of lost future opportunity, in delaying technology to improve the economic situation like Currency, and in the economic building that the 100 hammers could have built instead of the settler. (IOW, fishing villages are more worthwhile when settlers are cheaper as in Civ 3.) Finally, all of that is multiplied by the very real but mostly nonvisible factor of inflation. Take a mature late-game Civ 4 save and delete a fishing village in worldbuilder. Total expenses drop by 30 or 40 gold easy.

Adventure 35 Mach Five showed this in action, as a pure speed builder race without competing concerns. I built for maximum fishing villages, following in the footsteps of the winning Civ 3 performances. I came in a good handful of turns behind the best performances in Civ 4. And that was with some very productive corporations, which are the best way to leverage numerous smaller cities.

[Sirian]

There is a point late in the game, in Civ4, where the lid comes off and you can do what you please. (Civ5 could use something like this, but I don't think it is there. In my observations, gold tightens rather than loosens in the late game.) Civ4's economic loosening has up sides, with the ability to found new colonies in the 1600AD timeframe, and some of those can be fishing villages. But by then it usually doesn't matter, and even if it did, you have relatively little time left. Meanwhile, if you settle a site like that in 1600BC (instead of settling a stronger site, or just running with fewer cities and lower costs) you have made a strategic error.

In short, if the game has mechanics targetted at penalizing you for settling additional cities, then truly marginal locations will be a net drain. I just have more fun when I can play the map, which varies from game to game, and not the internal workings of the economic engine, which remain the same every game. ... Civ4's boundaries on city count have nothing to do with the map, and I played enough times to get all the enjoyment out of that track as I could. It's not as if Civ3 was all that brilliant on this front. It was vulnerable to the "Ring" strategy that exploited tiebreakers on distance-from-capital mechanics, which is actually the worst example short of ICS of ignoring the map and exploiting the game economy, but I personally felt no compulsion to play the Ring method. So it did not intrude on my experience, where the Civ4 methods for stopping snowballing did, after enough plays.

Civ on the whole is suffering from too much security, at this point. We have all manner of mechanics in place trying to stop ICS and other ways of gaming the system. To my mind, these measures have reached a point where they trample on the mainstream experience too much.

I realize I am biased in being the map guy, but I believe the map is crucial to the game. The map is what brings variance, and that variance is what breathes life in to the experience, what sets it apart from a game like Go. For this reason, I am not fond of the Specialist economy either. Civ3 was the pinnacle of interaction between player and map, and that is what I would try to recapture, emphasize and build upon in a Civ5 mod or any future Civ games to which I contribute.


- Sirian

[VoiceOfUnreason]

"One food resource" is the missing part. Sirian means truly marginal locations: no resources, maybe even no fresh water for irrigation, just the sea and the city center square.

Link

[T-hawk]

Civ4's economic loosening has up sides, with the ability to found new colonies in the 1600AD timeframe, and some of those can be fishing villages. But by then it usually doesn't matter, and even if it did, you have relatively little time left. ... Civ on the whole is suffering from too much security, at this point.

This is a manifestation of The Gap. In Civ 4, there's a monstrous gap between the tile yields of fertile territory and that of fishing villages. Besides the big resource yields, even normal levee towns escalate to 2-2-8, and forest goes to 2-3-1. But the game has to keep those power plays in balance with the stiff maintenance system. That leaves the humble 2-0-2 sea tile barely able to match its own cost, never mind contribute meaningfully to the positive.

Civ 3 had a much smaller gap of tile yields, where land tiles never outdid sea tiles for commerce (both equally benefiting from the Republic boost), food resources were smaller, and food itself was less important with hard city size caps and worker farming/merging available and less utility for over-max food with weak specialists. It appears that Civ 5 makes many of these same efforts to cut down this gap, no doubt by your hand.

It's not as if Civ3 was all that brilliant on this front. It was vulnerable to the "Ring" strategy that exploited tiebreakers on distance-from-capital mechanics

This was accidental, an artifact of the computer code. Once the mechanic was discovered and understood, it was patched out, during the PTW expansion. Founding date and city list position became second and third tiebreakers, and you could no longer have multiple cities sharing the closest-to-capital slot. It was never intentional.

Link

1. That has exactly the later-game boosts Sirian says. Extra trade routes, and two free specialists from Mercantilism and the Statue of Liberty producing free beakers via Representation. It would be strictly net negative without those boosts.

2. It's still not really positive. That city costs way more than 5 gold. It raises the number-of-cities cost for every city, and costs civic upkeep, all of which is multiplied by inflation.

3. 1 gold does not equal 1 beaker.. If this city is converting something like 9 real cost to 11 beakers, but the rest of the empire with multiplier buildings is more efficiently converting cost:beakers at a 1:1.5 ratio, this city is a net negative.

4. That Sirian himself built it does not mean it was a good strategic idea. It just means Sirian likes to build fishing villages.