Pre-Release CIV VI Discussion

[Gavagai]

GJ, you would never have 19 cities by T100 in a normal single player game in Civ4, even on a huge map. You would most likely have no more than 10. Two reasons:

1) Difficulty level.
2) Random, unedited map.

[GermanJoey]

GJ, you would never have 19 cities by T100 in a normal single player game in Civ4, even on a huge map. You would most likely have no more than 10. Two reasons:

1) Difficulty level.
2) Random, unedited map.

Well, of course not, and yes (also going back to Q's post) the situation I posted is on one of end of the extreme and I could see it being perceived as a bit disingenuous for someone used to playing on built-in mapscript maps. (although on those maps, it's rarely - if ever - the case that you *want* to stop building new cities, but that you simply run out of available land.). I was just trying to show a real counterexample (picking that game because I knew I had numbers for it) of Sirian's assertion of "Early game: found "too many" cities, get slapped down hard. Better stay within the allowed numbers, etc" to show that it was simply not true. He seems to bring it up every time anyone talks about the civ franchise in general, at least in the 2 and a half years I've been reading this forum, and every time someone tells him that's not right, and every time he ignores it, etc.

Going by what Bob says, it sounds like Sirian really just wants completely unhindered ICS back. I actually don't think there's anything wrong with that position - it was a core gameplay aspect of the civ series for a very long time, as much so as "managing workers" is to Civ4. (I'm not sure what I'd say was the analogous core gameplay aspect of Civ5, as it shifted around a lot more between patches and expansions and I lost interest in the game before the expansions came out) What frustrates me is this strawman tactic that Sirian's using, of saying something untrue and then attacking that... in order to indirectly support his position from the shadows or whatever. Just say what you mean!

[Qgqqqqq]

I think you're being far too harsh, Joey. Sirians assertion is generally true in the context in which he played Civ 4, and it is a reasonable complaint to make, especially on an instinctual level as T-hawk pointed out.

Expansion costs in a more visceral way in Civ 4&5 than it ever did before. And there really are basically guidelines to what one can build - it's just that they are more varied than he was making out - and moving beyond these can be brutal.

(Also, yeah on a ton of settings you definitely want to stop building cities, as building them will crash your economy. And that is painful, especially as they're ceded to the AI, who also happens to do quite a bit of cheating [less so post-improvements] to enable them to handle it.)

[GermanJoey]

I think you're being far too harsh, Joey. Sirians assertion is generally true in the context in which he played Civ 4, and it is a reasonable complaint to make, especially on an instinctual level as T-hawk pointed out.

Expansion costs in a more visceral way in Civ 4&5 than it ever did before. And there really are basically guidelines to what one can build - it's just that they are more varied than he was making out - and moving beyond these can be brutal.

(Also, yeah on a ton of settings you definitely want to stop building cities, as building them will crash your economy. And that is painful, especially as they're ceded to the AI, who also happens to do quite a bit of cheating [less so post-improvements] to enable them to handle it.)

Well yeah, on some of the really out there mapscripts with lots of very poor land (say, Boreal, Rainforest, or...... GLOBAL HIGHLANDS ), and on the highest difficulty settings (immortal/deity), there will come a point you simply won't be able to make new cities pay off in a quick enough time to be worth it. But on standardish single-player settings - e.g. pangaea, continents, or fractal mapscript, standard or large world-size, standard sea level, etc - you better get those cities while you can, believe me! An economy can be recovered later, especially if tech trading is enabled or you land some key wonders.

And I completely agree that you and T-Hawk, on your point about Civ4's economy being somewhat obscure to understand and awkward to manipulate. But, that is a completely different issue than whether the system itself has any fixed limits on expansion. Once a player has reached a certain level of skill, those limits go away and instead become trade-offs that can be planned around.

[Hail]

Expansion costs in a more visceral way in Civ 4&5 than it ever did before. And there really are basically guidelines to what one can build - it's just that they are more varied than he was making out - and moving beyond these can be brutal.

civ1 through civ3 have expansion costs while civ4 and beyond have expansion penalties.

expansion penalties are presented somewhat clearly in civ5, but civ4 hides the penalties behind screens.
I, personally, do not get this punish the player for expanding in an empire-building game. that's just me though, others seem to love it.

[...] Once a player has reached a certain level of skill, those limits go away [...]

[Gaspar]

I think one of the big reasons Civ4 expansion model feels less punitive is precisely because it is hidden behind lots of stuff. That is a meaningful distinction. I think watching the corruption taunt me with disappearing shields is one of the reasons I never got as into expanding in the earlier games as I did in Civ4, even if I understand whats going on behind the veil.

[Qgqqqqq]

Well yeah, on some of the really out there mapscripts with lots of very poor land (say, Boreal, Rainforest, or...... GLOBAL HIGHLANDS rant), and on the highest difficulty settings (immortal/deity), there will come a point you simply won't be able to make new cities pay off in a quick enough time to be worth it. But on standardish single-player settings - e.g. pangaea, continents, or fractal mapscript, standard or large world-size, standard sea level, etc - you better get those cities while you can, believe me! An economy can be recovered later, especially if tech trading is enabled or you land some key wonders.

You're saying, on Emperor/Continents you'll never hold off on expansion because of costs/economy?

That's not something that only occurs in edge cases. It's a general brake on expansion that has come into play on most every game I've played.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I think you're being far too harsh, Joey. Sirians assertion is generally true in the context in which he played Civ 4, and it is a reasonable complaint to make, especially on an instinctual level as T-hawk pointed out.

Expansion costs in a more visceral way in Civ 4&5 than it ever did before. And there really are basically guidelines to what one can build - it's just that they are more varied than he was making out - and moving beyond these can be brutal.

(Also, yeah on a ton of settings you definitely want to stop building cities, as building them will crash your economy. And that is painful, especially as they're ceded to the AI, who also happens to do quite a bit of cheating [less so post-improvements] to enable them to handle it.)

Well yeah, on some of the really out there mapscripts with lots of very poor land (say, Boreal, Rainforest, or...... GLOBAL HIGHLANDS ), and on the highest difficulty settings (immortal/deity), there will come a point you simply won't be able to make new cities pay off in a quick enough time to be worth it. But on standardish single-player settings - e.g. pangaea, continents, or fractal mapscript, standard or large world-size, standard sea level, etc - you better get those cities while you can, believe me! An economy can be recovered later, especially if tech trading is enabled or you land some key wonders.

And I completely agree that you and T-Hawk, on your point about Civ4's economy being somewhat obscure to understand and awkward to manipulate. But, that is a completely different issue than whether the system itself has any fixed limits on expansion. Once a player has reached a certain level of skill, those limits go away and instead become trade-offs that can be planned around.

I find those mapscripts the ones I can kinda reliably beat diety on as I don't do playing the AI weaknesses too well. The AI takes years to clear jungle on rainforest and settles copious junk cities that add little on boreal/highlands. Plus boreal has big limits on city sizes as half of the resources don't naturally occur on the map!

[SevenSpirits]

Well yeah, on some of the really out there mapscripts with lots of very poor land (say, Boreal, Rainforest, or...... GLOBAL HIGHLANDS rant), and on the highest difficulty settings (immortal/deity), there will come a point you simply won't be able to make new cities pay off in a quick enough time to be worth it. But on standardish single-player settings - e.g. pangaea, continents, or fractal mapscript, standard or large world-size, standard sea level, etc - you better get those cities while you can, believe me! An economy can be recovered later, especially if tech trading is enabled or you land some key wonders.

You're saying, on Emperor/Continents you'll never hold off on expansion because of costs/economy?

That's not something that only occurs in edge cases. It's a general brake on expansion that has come into play on most every game I've played.

I find this to be a weird debate, because what does it mean to "hold off on expansion"? Civ IV is a game of exponential growth, and the optimal growth curve involves some amount of expansion. Does the fact that not every hammer goes into settlers mean you are holding off?

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well yeah, on some of the really out there mapscripts with lots of very poor land (say, Boreal, Rainforest, or...... GLOBAL HIGHLANDS rant), and on the highest difficulty settings (immortal/deity), there will come a point you simply won't be able to make new cities pay off in a quick enough time to be worth it. But on standardish single-player settings - e.g. pangaea, continents, or fractal mapscript, standard or large world-size, standard sea level, etc - you better get those cities while you can, believe me! An economy can be recovered later, especially if tech trading is enabled or you land some key wonders.

You're saying, on Emperor/Continents you'll never hold off on expansion because of costs/economy?

That's not something that only occurs in edge cases. It's a general brake on expansion that has come into play on most every game I've played.

I find this to be a weird debate, because what does it mean to "hold off on expansion"? Civ IV is a game of exponential growth, and the optimal growth curve involves some amount of expansion. Does the fact that not every hammer goes into settlers mean you are holding off?

I would guess that Sirian would say that each city you found isn't as good so the growth isn't truly exponential. You might even have to wait until stuff like currency comes in, pressing end turn, but your probably right that isn't optimal.

In Civ3 you could snowball ahead exponentially until corruption starts being harsh. This limit will be after all the land is settled (remember your not supposed to ICS). Civ3 stops the game from ending just from killing one AI (see this happening in the sole AoW3s game here), while not forcing you to wait to settle land. Oh, and they nerfed corruption alot after launch so if you stopped playing the game at that point your not getting the right perspective on corruption in Civ3.