Pre-Release CIV VI Discussion

[Qgqqqqq]

I mean, there are times where I've built a settler only to put it on ice because it seems clear my economy can't handle the extra city. So it's a little bit more than "sometimes there are better uses for ones hammers than settlers".

[scooter]

Wow, it's 2016 and some still think the maintenance system in Civ4 seriously limits expansion. I thought that had been pretty thoroughly debunked? It does require a higher degree of skill to maintain tech progress while rapidly expanding than previous iterations of the series needed, but I don't think that's a bad thing. The game just gives you so many tools to deal with the problem. Setting aside the crazier maps, even the less-lush maps that some PBEMs/PBs have been played on have been glorified REX contests in the early going.

If we want to be critical of Civ4's expansion process, maybe a better criticism would be that the game is too worker-intensive. It heavily rewards those who can squeeze every last ounce of worker labor to make sure every population is working at max efficiency for you. On one hand it's a skill thing, but on the other hand it's tedious and arguably too rewarding. If you don't have the appropriate level of worker labor, yeah, it can be pretty difficult to balance expansion. But bigger is still always better in this game.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Wow, it's 2016 and some still think the maintenance system in Civ4 seriously limits expansion. I thought that had been pretty thoroughly debunked? It does require a higher degree of skill to maintain tech progress while rapidly expanding than previous iterations of the series needed, but I don't think that's a bad thing. The game just gives you so many tools to deal with the problem. Setting aside the crazier maps, even the less-lush maps that some PBEMs/PBs have been played on have been glorified REX contests in the early going.

If we want to be critical of Civ4's expansion process, maybe a better criticism would be that the game is too worker-intensive. It heavily rewards those who can squeeze every last ounce of worker labor to make sure every population is working at max efficiency for you. On one hand it's a skill thing, but on the other hand it's tedious and arguably too rewarding. If you don't have the appropriate level of worker labor, yeah, it can be pretty difficult to balance expansion. But bigger is still always better in this game.

I'm pretty sure that Q and Sirian aren't talking about noble on a lush map.

[Qgqqqqq]

The maintenance system clearly and explicitly limits expansion.

Whether it does so "seriously" is a) subjective and b) depends greatly on what mode you're playing.

(I agree cutting workers in some way would be a greatly positive thing to do.)


And I'm not criticizing Civ 4, here. I've played it to an order of magnitude more than I have any other game. I just think that those critiquing Sirian weren't acknowledging the complexity of opinions people can reasonably have on this issue, and the rationale underlying them.

[scooter]

The maintenance system clearly and explicitly limits expansion.

Whether it does so "seriously" is a) subjective and b) depends greatly on what mode you're playing.

Yeah I understand what you're saying, but I'm just arguing it limits it in the way that Civ3's corruption limited expansion: technically yes, in practice no not really. You still want to be expanding constantly. You just have to build more than just settlers in order to do it.

The idea that Civ4 somehow hampers your ability to expand into huge empires is really, really confusing to me. The game encourages it at every turn! In fact, it does it so much that Civ5's design team seemingly made it their primary mission to scale it way back. Maybe I'm still just not understanding what the Civ3/Civ4 distinction is...? I didn't play a whole lot of Civ3, so it's very possible I'm just misunderstanding Sirian's point.

[Qgqqqqq]

Well, that requires a broader definition of "expansion" than I was using. What's your threshold? Is a lighthouse expansion (there's an obvious Civ 4/5 dichotomy there, as in 5 it costs in upkeep)? Is growing pop?

I was considering expansion as creating new cities.


And obviously Civ 4 encourages large empires. But it imposes a cost on doing so - and this cost is greater or lesser depending on other factors, disappearing in the late game entirely.

[GermanJoey]

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

Most certainly not. Nor on Immortal or Deity either, especially since the AIs will eat most of the land anyways. (fwiw, Continents is a very hard mapscript on the highest difficulty levels because there is a lot of land.) Get it while the gettin' is good.

I mean, there are things you want to build besides settlers sometimes, so in that sense you could say that you hold off on expansion, but, if there's land out there to take then it's always a very high priority to take it. E.g. if you're trying to develop cottages at and slow-build a library in your capital, then you should still be whipping workers and settlers out of secondary cities at the cost of their long-term growth, etc.

[GermanJoey]

And obviously Civ 4 encourages large empires. But it imposes a cost on doing so - and this cost is greater or lesser depending on other factors, disappearing in the late game entirely.

There's absolutely a big cost and risk to expansion, but you're making an investment. Looking just at the city, there's three costs to it:

1.) the 100h for the settler, of course
2.) the opportunity cost for the city building the settler
3.) the sum of the additional expenses incurred because of this city, across time

And by settling a city, you're betting that its total output will eventually exceed all 3 of these combined, and then some. Hence, the reason you're motivated to build a big empire.

Civ3 actually also has a payback concept, except that the third term - the sum of the additional expenses incurred because of this new city - does not exist. There's only the initial investment that you need to pay back. However, instead you have corruption, which works to stretch out the time that this new city will pay back that initial investment. Roughly speaking, if your corruption is at 33%, then it will take 1/(1-0.33) = 1.5 times as long for the city to pay itself back. The key conceptual difference is that in Civ3, the city itself is 100% liable for paying back its own loan. Or, in other words, the cost to the empire for settling a new city is only that initial investment. Thus, because settlers are not very expensive, there's very little disincentive to not settle new cities.

OTOH, Civ4 does try to dis-incentivize settling by punishing your economy, but ultimately fails for another reason. You're correct that at the higher difficulty levels, if you were playing in a sandbox, maintenance becomes high enough that it can be optimal, economically speaking, looking at a fixed-length window, to stop settling new cities. However, the payback equation I posted is missing a few details. First of all, you don't pay back cities, you pay back your decisions. Everything you in the game has a cost for doing it and a cost for not doing it. In this case, the cost for the decision for settling a city is the cost of a city itself *plus* the opportunity cost for the empire. There's two more terms here:

1.) There's a situational opportunity cost. In other words, you've gotta defend your investment! Other players can come and stop all over your equations if you let them. Thus, sometimes a city that might look good on paper ends up being a terrible investment because it it makes your entire empire more vulnerable to enemy attack, or pisses off a neighbor, or requires you to always keep an enormous garrison on hand to defend it and thus ties your hands to other opportunities, etc. On the other hand, sometimes a city might have horrible output but captures a key chokepoint, or enables an invasion of a hated neighbor by acting as a surprise canal, or is able to very quickly snag a wonder because of plentiful chops, etc, and thus will have a very low (or even negative!) opportunity cost.

2.) In the short term, your economy will take a hit, and thus delay (or prevent) you from doing other things. Settling some cities now might delay Currency, which may delay X tech down the line, etc. Or it might cost you just enough to delay Calendar by 1 turn, pushing your MoM completion date into a coinflip with another civ, that you then lose. Unlike the above term, this cost is really only in Civ4. However, with skill and planning and the use of a million and one tricks, players can greatly mitigate this cost. Maybe we're late to knights, but we can make sure to have plenty of catapults and war elephants later. Maybe we're hovering around 0gpt at 0% slider, but we can run scientists and limp to alphabet, and then channel our greater production into research builds to get to currency, to essentially transform our debt into something else. (e..g maybe we have a similar currency date now, but have less libraries or military units to show for it, or we used up a lot of our chops to get those things too and thus can't build an important wonder later we otherwise would have, or have slower forges, etc.)

The reason that, in the end, it's pretty much always worth it to settle new land is that it is usually the case that the opportunity cost to the empire for *not* settling a city can greatly outweigh the cost of settling it, because if you don't settle it now then you may have to war for it later. War is inevitable, yes, but is often extremely expensive and risky. An ill-decided war can completely doom your game. So, one of the biggest strategic decisions you can make is making sure that you only go to war on your own terms. Against high-difficulty AIs, there's certain timing windows where you can hit them and win, otherwise not. Against humans, things get messy. If a big empire can figure out how to prevent war until all its investments have paid off (and thus it is stronger than the little empire). Thus, we bring out as many tricks as we can in order to keep that REX machine humming while trying to figure out how to scare our enemies with smoke and mirrors. Of course, the little guy might actually be as little as we think he is, or might call our bluff early. OTOH, you can try to trick the enemy into believing that you're waiting until later and then hit them where they least expect it, or trick them into thinking that you're tricking them to get them to spam useless defensive units, etc. Once the human element and mind-games start to come in, then that's where these equations start to break down...

[Bobchillingworth]

Great post & summation of the differences and similarities between the Civ III and IV expansion models

[HansLemurson]

So do we think that Civ6 will have ICS from the get-go?
If not, what sorts of limits do you think it will try to impose on reckless expansion?