Civilization 5 Announced

[superoxen]

First, gotta say I really am enjoying Civ 5 so far. Besides some major issues like dumb and really irrational and grouchy AI, it is a lot of fun to set up some cool fights with your units and enjoy the tactical system. The game is fun, but I agree there's many issues.

The expansion thing is quite annoying and, IMO, against the traditional spirit of the Civ series. Many times it's already been said, but I think is a very important issue: Civ 5 punishes player big time for expansion beyond a small, powerful core of cities. Having more than 5 or so cities, you get the penalties:


[INDENT]1) Major happiness issues - not so bad when the city first is built, but when it grows you get hammered. Empire becomes unhappy. Cities stop growing. Not a big deal, maybe, but as you get more and more cities the unhappiness gets really huge.[/INDENT]

[INDENT]2) Money issues - constructing anything but most basic buildings (culture/science/happy buildings) in a city makes some huge upkeep. Add on more for every city you start up and it gets unbearable. Then sometimes you can't connect these new cities with roads cause that costs too much as well. Say I want to place a small fortress city in a strategic position, rush some barracks/walls/etc in preparation for a war, that city costs me 10-15 gpt with a road connection, and that's a barebones city specialized to pure military/defense. Just an example, but economic burden really stops ability to place cities situationally. I could do that in previous Civ games, put down city for one purpose and not worry about hurting my economy too much. Not so now. Then add on that you can't abandon your own cities...makes placing any more than those few core cities a major, permanent investment, and potentially can be a crippling one.[/INDENT]

[INDENT]3) Real slow policy growth, and pretty much impossible culture win with more than a handful of cities. This to me seems really dumb. I guess devs wanted to avoid people conquering tons of cities and spamming culture buildings for quick policies, but even in past civ games where you can do that it's still better to have just a few cities and concentrate on teching up and wonder/culture production rather than military conquest, from my experience. At least then you had the choice to be a bastard and squash people for fun while still building huge culture, now you gotta just turtle with your few cities pretty much. Or you can fight people and just raze everything, but then you got the AIs all pissed off and get crushed by unholy dogpile of units at King+ difficulty.
[/INDENT]

The real bad part is not just making me unable to expand on my own past a certain "optimal" number of cities (I've found this to be 4), it's that I cannot go on a warpath anymore. Want to annex cities and craft them into valuable part of the empire? Too bad, get ruined by unhappiness and the courthouse that takes forever to build and takes a major helping of my GPT. Want to puppet cities, not worry about it and just let em grow as they will? Too bad, they just build every single building possible and really trash the economy. Then of course I got the culture problems either way. Best to just burn everything. That comes back to getting all the other AIs real shifty and eager to pick fights. Basically this makes the player unable to expand through warfare without either really hurting the empire, or having the whole world eventually make war on ya.

So I've found that I can't expand on my own past a handful of cities without unavoidable setbacks, and I can't expand through warfare cause of the same setbacks and the additional problems of getting every AI come knocking at my door. I think this is just a bad way to make the game, forcing the player to keep a small empire.

I really do think this goes against the spirit of Civ, cause the real enjoyment of the game for me always has been fashioning a strong empire. Sometimes I made it on my own, expanding and teching and working every opportunity without real conflict, sometimes I made it by picking off weaklings and expanding into their lands, sometimes I made it by just making one hell of a fight with everyone I saw. But every time, I always could make a strong empire either large or small - was always up to me. Want a big empire? Gotta work for it. Want a small empire? Gotta protect it and really specialize and min/max things. Now, I have got no choice. Gotta keep my small empire, otherwise my nation falls under it own weight, and fast. I've gone to playing with mods that reduce upkeep on roads, buildings, units etc just so I can spam happy buildings at no cost and conquer without hurting myself beyond repair.

Not meaning to whine, I really am enjoying the game for some reasons, but I think this is a real important thing, the way they've changed this. Maybe I just got to learn better how to manage a large empire, and maybe there's a lot of tricks to pick up on yet. So far it just seems to me like bad design.

[haphazard1]

Has anyone managed to dig out the details of unit support costs? Some very strange things seem to happen in this area, with single additional units causing big step increases. As Sirian described his wife's game, should seven units really be an unsustainable military?

Maybe I will go digging through the SDK files a bit and try to find this.

Also from Sirian's description -- building Wealth is totally useless. Sullla's description of getting more cash by building and disbanding units over and over again...ouch. Talk about broken.

Finally, I very strongly agree with Serdoa's post. Maybe fixes and patches will help, but right now Civ V just feels small in so many ways. Except for the save files, of course.

[v8mark]

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.

This is an interesting point. As T-hawk says,

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.

For me, the interaction between player and map in Civ4 is excellent, and much greater than it was in Civ3, because of precisely this point. In Civ4, there's a real, tangible difference that can be seen immediately between terrain - for instance, between a flood plain/river city for commerce and a food/hill city for production. This is because of large differences between yields - pastured pigs or irrigated corn offering +4 food/city, mines offering +2 hammers. In addition, there were tiles to really get excited about in Civ4 - grassland gems and plains gold could increase early research by as much as 50%. In some instances this can be unbalancing (in the BFC of a capital, for example) but in some it offers real strategic choice and judgement - a desert hill gold in a suboptimal area, for example.

In Civ3, if I remember correctly (and please correct me if I'm wrong), there was an 'ideal' city, which consisted of 12 grassland river tiles with shields, which had to be mined for a 2/2/1 output. There was very little choice in this regard, because this was strictly optimal - the 'one right choice'. You literally couldn't get any better than this city - even special resources only offered a food here or a hammer there, which is a model Civ5 has repeated, it seems.

Another point is that in Civ3, because of the prevailing strategy of ICS, anywhere that could accommodate a city would have one. Again, this isn't a choice strategically. Having a city is better than not having one, because even if it was only even capable of one hammer and one coin (which it often was) settlers were so cheap and there were so few externalities to having the city that it just made sense. In Civ4 there was a significant short-term cost to founding a city which may or may not pay off in the long run. This is an excellent mechanic - a high risk, high REX strategy also had a high reward.

Superoxen mentions a 'hard cap' on cities and happiness which you simply can't overcome without, essentially, breaking the game mechanics (as many people have done, if CFC is anything to go by - but surely massive unhappiness can't have been a conscious design decision? If it is, it's a dreadful one). Civ4, again, was much more flexible in this regard. You could go over a certain number of cities, but you had to take a short-term research and cash penalty. If you wanted to expand yet further, there were again solutions - increase your base commerce, run merchants, build markets or wealth. Happiness and health in Civ4 were brilliantly handled, I thought - there weren't hard caps, but soft ones. Wanted big cities early? Tech monarchy or settle the silver/fur site up north that's way in the tundra. Convert to Buddhism, but risk the ire of your Hindu neighbour. Again, all brilliant trade-offs - short-term gain with long-term risk, or short-term hit for long-term gain - exactly as a strategy game should be. Civ3 offered very few of these things, and it seems Civ5 doesn't either.

Put simply, all of these things added strategic depth from Civ3 to Civ4, in my opinion, and I really, seriously don't understand why many of them were removed from Civ5. If it's some sort of accessibility argument, I'd argue that Civ4 was perfectly accessible, because the lower difficulty levels were forgiving and the feeling of accomplishment remained. If it's change for its own sake, then I don't agree with that I'm afraid - there's no reason at all why Civ5 shouldn't build on Civ4, rather than feeling some desire to be radically different.

If it's because the designers wanted to go back to something resembling Civ3 rather than Civ4, then I'm afraid they have a fundamentally different idea of what makes a good 4X strategy game than I do. This may well be the case, but if it is, I won't be buying Civ5.

That was much longer than I intended. Hopefully it made sense

[VoiceOfUnreason]

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

Which is why I dug it up - it's 1000 words of what Sirian means by "fishing village".

Not having done the calculations myself, I agree that it doesn't look viable. And it doesn't look fun. Plus it gives me Frozen Jungle flashbacks.

[Sullla]

I actually have some ideas about how to manage economy and also expand (sort of) in Civ5 that I want to test out. I think I'm going to dump my mopping-up phase King/Always War game and try them out to see if they work.

Here's the basic idea, inspired by some threads at CivFanatics: have that core of ~3-4 cities mentioned by superoxen, and then everything else is a filler city. You plant lots of tiny cities, and you do *NOT* let them grow. My initial gut feeling is that size 4 is the ideal size. You filler cities have exactly four buildings:

- Monument (for minimal culture/border expansion)
- Library (science + specialist slots)
- Market (no cost, adds gold)
- Colosseum (four happiness)

Build nothing else! You need 8 food to support this city. Most likely, you should be able to get 6 food on the center tile from Maritime city states. Then you only need a single 2-food tile to feed this city; a 2/2 river hill or some kind of bonus resource is your best option (hill sheep, grassland horses, etc.) What do you do with the other three tiles? Trading posts, ideally on hills: 0/2/2 tile, or even better 0/2/3 next to a river. You should be able to get about 10 gold total, enough to make a profit even after the buildings are constructed. More when the market finishes, and after the trade route bonus is added.

So you make gold, and you make research. (Solid on gold? Need more beakers? Pull your population off those hills and onto Library scientist specialists. Put two points into Rationalism for the specialist boost, and now your scientists make 5 beakers each. That tiny size 4 city with almost no infrastructure now gives you 16 beakers/turn... and cost nothing economically.) The only thing it costs you is unhappiness, and you make back 4 of that 6 unhappiness with the colosseum. You can probably cover that with luxuries and such, not to mention some of the social policies. Some civs are even better for this:

* India (same 6 total unhappiness, but you can reduce that to 4 with Forbidden Palace or the Order social policy that does the same thing)
* Egypt (replace monument with Burial Tomb)

Remember, I'm not thinking planting one or two of these cities, I'm thinking blanketing the map with them. Total ICS style. No need for culture to expand borders, just claim the free starting six tiles and cram your cities together. All you need is 3-4 hill tiles, and you're good to go. Even if you don't have hills, you can just turn the population into specialists and run 2 scientists + 1 merchant (if you have enough income to cash-rush the buildings). Get your income up and running, get a couple of points into Patronage, and watch the city state benefits roll in. You'll have good production (8-10 shields per turn in each filler city), good research, and a large cash surplus. Bigger = better.

Of course, I still don't know that this will actually work, having not tested it yet. I think the theory is sound though. Whether this would actually produce fun and engaging gameplay, however... I almost hope it DOESN'T work, to be honest. ICS really sucks.

[Bullstrode]

"You start in the year 4000 BC with just one warrior and a tiny village, and over the span of six thousand years, you build your civilization until it has four cities, a handful of buildings, and seven military units!"

That doesn't sound like a very exciting game.

It seems to me in a game like Civ, you want to grow big, even more than you want to win the game. Making your empire bigger is, to me and I think most players, fun and the de facto point of the game. I'm playing as Alexander the Great, I want to take over the world. In Civ 4, growing big then leads to winning, which makes sense and is satisfying. The problem with Civ 5 seems to be that it has decoupled growing big and winning, so that they are two different goals, often in conflict with each other.

By all means, make growing big hard. Make it expensive and hard to do. But don't make it a big strategic mistake. Don't punish me for wanting a large empire, which to me, as a casual to casual-plus player, is the point of the game. Sure, there should be other paths to glory, like OCCs, smaller empire culture victories, etc., but let those be secondary options on how to play the game, not the main way to go.

As a player, I should want tons of cities, every building, lots of cool units, and techs and social policies. But they should all have costs, so I have to make choices. There shouldn't ever be a point where I say even if I could easily have another city or cool building, I wouldn't want it, because it would be a net negative to my empire. People shouldn't be, as they seem to be doing now pretty often, razing every city they conquer because adding a new city would be a bummer. There shouldn't be buildings that are almost never worth the maintenance cost.

The goal of the game shouldn't be a medium-sized empire. The goal should be a huge empire, but it should be very difficult, so most of the time you have to make do with a medium-sized empire. There's a difference. This game encourages smallness at every turn.

I seem to remember reading that John Schafer, whose name I almost certainly have wrong, designed the game the way he did because he enjoys playing medium-sized empires. I would say if that's the way you like to play Civilization best, you might have lost touch with what made Civ fun the first 1000 times you played it. Which is being Alexander the Great, not Alexander the Medium.

[Txurce]

I actually have some ideas about how to manage economy and also expand (sort of) in Civ5 that I want to test out. I think I'm going to dump my mopping-up phase King/Always War game and try them out to see if they work.

Here's the basic idea, inspired by some threads at CivFanatics: have that core of ~3-4 cities mentioned by superoxen, and then everything else is a filler city. You plant lots of tiny cities, and you do *NOT* let them grow. My initial gut feeling is that size 4 is the ideal size. You filler cities have exactly four buildings:

- Monument (for minimal culture/border expansion)
- Library (science + specialist slots)
- Market (no cost, adds gold)
- Colosseum (four happiness)

Build nothing else! You need 8 food to support this city. Most likely, you should be able to get 6 food on the center tile from Maritime city states. Then you only need a single 2-food tile to feed this city; a 2/2 river hill or some kind of bonus resource is your best option (hill sheep, grassland horses, etc.) What do you do with the other three tiles? Trading posts, ideally on hills: 0/2/2 tile, or even better 0/2/3 next to a river. You should be able to get about 10 gold total, enough to make a profit even after the buildings are constructed. More when the market finishes, and after the trade route bonus is added.

So you make gold, and you make research. (Solid on gold? Need more beakers? Pull your population off those hills and onto Library scientist specialists. Put two points into Rationalism for the specialist boost, and now your scientists make 5 beakers each. That tiny size 4 city with almost no infrastructure now gives you 16 beakers/turn... and cost nothing economically.) The only thing it costs you is unhappiness, and you make back 4 of that 6 unhappiness with the colosseum. You can probably cover that with luxuries and such, not to mention some of the social policies. Some civs are even better for this:

* India (same 6 total unhappiness, but you can reduce that to 4 with Forbidden Palace or the Order social policy that does the same thing)
* Egypt (replace monument with Burial Tomb)

Remember, I'm not thinking planting one or two of these cities, I'm thinking blanketing the map with them. Total ICS style. No need for culture to expand borders, just claim the free starting six tiles and cram your cities together. All you need is 3-4 hill tiles, and you're good to go. Even if you don't have hills, you can just turn the population into specialists and run 2 scientists + 1 merchant (if you have enough income to cash-rush the buildings). Get your income up and running, get a couple of points into Patronage, and watch the city state benefits roll in. You'll have good production (8-10 shields per turn in each filler city), good research, and a large cash surplus. Bigger = better.

Of course, I still don't know that this will actually work, having not tested it yet. I think the theory is sound though. Whether this would actually produce fun and engaging gameplay, however... I almost hope it DOESN'T work, to be honest. ICS really sucks.

I read those posts at CFC, and will try them as well in my next game, incorporating some of your wrinkles. As to whether it's a foolproof ICS strat... I think there are too many variables (like not enough hills, not enough gold to rush, etc). These are part of what the new map variances contribute. But it may be a way to help create that sense of empire so many of us associate with Civ.

Given how few wasteful buildings the AI puts up early in the game, I wonder if the same strategy could be applied to annexed cities?

[haphazard1]

I very strongly agree, Bullstrode.

I seem to remember reading that John Schafer, whose name I almost certainly have wrong, designed the game the way he did because he enjoys playing medium-sized empires. I would say if that's the way you like to play Civilization best, you might have lost touch with what made Civ fun the first 1000 times you played it. Which is being Alexander the Great, not Alexander the Medium.

What I recall reading is that Jon Shafer likes to play with three cities. That is not even a medium-sized empire, that is outright small. All of Civ V seems to reflect this view, and focuses on thinking small.

Alexander the Small.

I never played much Civ III -- the timing was not right in my life to spend many hours on gaming during most of its run. I got back into gaming in a big way with Civ IV. But so much of what I am reading makes it sound like Civ V is not Civ IV part 2, but Civ III part 2. Right down to many of the same exploits and holes (ROP rape, lump sum gold deals which you can then break, etc.).

This may be a valid game design concept, and I get that I am apparently not the target audience of Civ V. But as a fan of Civ IV, I find the new game disappointing. I thought Civ IV was a pretty big success? Why not build on that base?

[darrelljs]

Sulla,

I'd say the best civ for this approach is China, with their UB giving an extra 4 gold/turn. Some cons:

1. You are giving up on most National Wonders, but then that doesn't feel like a huge loss anyway.

2. At size 4 you are net -2 in happiness, right? That adds up fast. Of course, some cities will claim a new resource for you but then why not just found those and leave lots of the map unsettled?

3. Costs to adopt social policies will spiral out of control.

4. One of the advantages to many cities is to keep up in production with the AI in an IND war. Those little cities aren't going to be making many Tanks.

Darrell

[uberfish]

In any game where you're expanding beyond a few cities, most national wonders aren't worth the trouble.

I think it is generally good strategy to keep peripheral cities small, with minimal buildings, as I mentioned in one of my previous posts. It actually got me thinking along similar lines as Sulla did in his post, it seems to me colosseum build time would be the limiting factor on ICS style expansion, but if you started the process with a good happiness buffer it would help considerably. I might give this one a test too - Rome, Egypt, China all appear to have potential.