Civilization 5 Announced

[uberfish]

This small city strategy really needs a name, what about HEX for horizontal expansion? It's not really ICS as you can't do exponential growth (need to wait for colosseums to go up between each round of expansion) and terrain does matter.

It seems to be a very effective way to claim land, and also a very effective way to get AIs to declare war on you, don't forget to pick up horses!

You just have to accept that you won't have many social policies, I personally wouldn't try to stockpile culture until communism, sure it's very powerful once you get it but your early game will be weak. The late-game SP branches have nice stuff early on in the progression anyway.

[Swiss Pauli]

I think HEX might be a bit confusing...how about Big/Small aka BS

[Pandajuice]

After reading Sullla's recent Civ 5 reports and this thread, am I right in thinking that most of you guys are finding the game far less fun than other Civs, and even a step backward from Civ 4 back into Civ 3 madness?

It just baffles me how Firaxis could screw the formula up so badly when they'd perfected it in Civ 4 (although, some of the poor design decisions that made it into Warlords/Beyond the Sword should have been a harbinger for what was to come i.e. Corporations and Vassal states). Are there some redeeming values to this game, and is it likely to get "fixed" and made more sane in the coming months?

I loved every inch of vanilla Civ4 and especially loved reading what some of you were able to accomplish in that game and how much fun it was to play and read about, so it really disappoints me that Civ5 has been released as broken as it seems.

[darrelljs]

After reading Sullla's recent Civ 5 reports and this thread, am I right in thinking that most of you guys are finding the game far less fun than other Civs, and even a step backward from Civ 4 back into Civ 3 madness?

I don't think that's necessarily true. I doubt it will ever be as great a game as Civ 4, but until some core issues are fixed the game can't be properly evaluated.

Darrell

[Smegged]

My wife

- Sirian

Congratulations man

[SevenSpirits]

I don't think so. You're overreading the individual tile, from my point of view. Not every plains site will have an abundance of rivers. Without the river, there aren't any farmable hills and there isn't the extra food to put those mined hills in to use. Some plains hills and many desert and tundra hills will be unusable. This is part of what is reflected in the weighting system.

Whether the grassland region is ultimately a weaker terrain set than elsewhere is beside the point as well. It's the zone that will support the highest population count, the most food at any given city site, and is thus best enabled to grow vertically.

The amount of land isn't just about strength, but also style.

I don't expect you to agree, at this point, but I did not do this haphazardly. You can mod it over to your preferences if you wish.


- Sirian

If your goal were simply to grow as much population as possible, it's true that grassland would let you do that best. But in reality, that is far from good play! The marginal value of food decreases rapidly with higher populations, while the value of working gold and hammer tiles stays flat or even increases. (Buildings are more valuable in higher pop cities.) Because of this, there is a point in a city's growth where mines/TPs are better than additional 2-food farm. This point is easily reachable in the medieval era.

A grass city will reach this point at far fewer farms than a plains city (and more mines/TPs). When all is said and done, the plains city will have roughly the same food output, but increased gold/hammer output over the grass city, because farms (2 yield) + plains (2 yield) is more efficient than mines/farms (1-2 yield) + grass (2 yield).

If there was some shortage of food in the game, grassland would be meaningful in creating large populations. But actually the opposite is true - extra food is the easiest thing to get in the game! Between city states and very efficient farms, grass is, for the most part, a handicap.

[sunrise089]

@SevenSpirits and Sirian:

It seems to me there is a basic disagreement of whether or not grassland is better than plains. We all know the answer in Civ4, and a superficial examination of the Civ5 terrain systems might indicate lazy programming via carrying over Civ4 terrain weights when they are not applicable. After all, we know lots of Civ4 code was carried over for whatever reason.

Anyways, I see four possibilities, two of which are distinctly troubling:

1) The code interpretation in this thread is incorrect, and grassland is not considered move valuable than plains by the game systems.

2) The game is treating grassland as better than plains because of lazy use of Civ4 code, and the new mechanics have not been considered. This would be shameful in a full-price title in my opinion.

3) The game is treating grassland as better than plains because the developers incorrectly believe it is so. This would once again be shameful - a couple dozen players should not be able to out-analyze very basic and fundamental game mechanics within a few weeks of release.

4) The game is treating grassland as better than plains because the developers correctly believe it is so. We all may be missing something, and the increased ability to grow vertically may be much more valuable than production or gold.

Sadly, I suspect the truth is 3, though I'm happy to be proven wrong. I get the impression the developers were either much too short sided or unimaginative in their testing to realize the power of leveraged maritime city states, compounded with the costs of additional population at high levels. As others have said, it seems almost impossible that the developers intended for the ideal empire development path to be 3-4 good cities and dozens of tiny ones. But once one has eliminated the impossible...well you know the saying, and the truth is either there is some even stronger play out there we've not yet uncovered, or the developers were either too lazy or too incompetent to play their own game well.

Again, I'm happy to be proven wrong, but if the above does end up being close to the truth then the moral is make sure a large percentage of the testing crew is made up on strong and analytical players. Of course testers are needed at lower game levels to ensure the game remains fun, but strong players are needed to to make sure high levels aren't full of exploits and bugs. Civ4 did a masterful job of this. Settler and Chieften are so easy that fun is in ample supply - if you don't like microing workers automate them. Don't know what to build - turn on recommendations. The only justification I can see for a broken high-level game is a weird psychological one - make the high levels easy after you've uncovered exploits to make poor players think they are amazing, and therefore praise the game. If that's the case though, then I can't see the series as offering much to skilled players going forward.

[haphazard1]

3) The game is treating grassland as better than plains because the developers incorrectly believe it is so. This would once again be shameful - a couple dozen players should not be able to out-analyze very basic and fundamental game mechanics within a few weeks of release.

Within a few hours, actually. Discussion at Civ Fanatics had picked up on the reduced value of grasslands (relative to Civ IV grasslands, and other Civ V terrain types) the first day of release. The value of farming river-side hills, rather than mining them, was also apparent almost immediately.

I would really like to believe we are not looking at either case 2 or case 3. But it sure does not look that way, at least so far. With all the other issues found to date in Civ V, I am not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt.

[luddite]

Grasslands aren't really all that much worse than plains. First, in the beginning of the game you probably want to grow quickly, and grass is better for that. Don't forget that trade route gold and research in the beginning is based purely on population. Also, until you have civil service, 2 grass farms and a mine is exactly the same as 3 plains farms. Civil Service does change things a lot, but not a whole lot. 3 grass farms + 3 mines = 9 production, 4 plains farms + 2 mines = 10 production. But the grassland can be better for running specialists or trading posts.

The only things that really distort the balance betweem grass and plains are golden ages and maritime food.

[SevenSpirits]

I hear ya. Though don't forget that you always get some tiles for quick growth, even in plains. The difference is you grow more slowly at large pops, but at that point growing isn't very efficient anyway.

The only things that really distort the balance betweem grass and plains are golden ages and maritime food.

Worst punchline ever.