Solver, Please Fix Colony Expense Illogic - It Ruined My First BTS Game!

[ZEE]

i hate maintenence. the player is penalized MORE than the AI it seems. You claim, Snoopy, that it is there to hurt ICS players and force us to play differently. this is utterly insane and bull**** because the AI builds crazy large empires on the higher difficulty AND holds its economy together with the stupid bonuses it gets. this is why the only way to win is to rush-attack everybody and get a cheap and quick victory.

they killed Civ.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by AAHZ
... because the AI builds crazy large empires on the higher difficulty AND holds its economy together with the stupid bonuses it gets. this is why the only way to win is to rush-attack everybody and get a cheap and quick victory.

So play on a LOWER difficulty and don't allow yourself a cheap or quick victory, for crying out softly!

Objective: to bring everyone down to my own level, of course (see sig).

[snoopy369]

The AI seems better at economy than the average human, partly because of some bonuses it gets, yes. You can always edit the handicap xml file to change that as you see fit

Generally I think that a good economy is not that hard to manage, just use courthouses, intelligently adjust your commerce rates, and intelligently build a forbidden palace, and you'll be fine.

[Arator]

Originally posted by Solver
I do not see any catch. If you moved your capital elsewhere, the only thing you would lose is Bureaucracy in that city, as you say, which frankly isn't that great at increasing pure money.

OK, I moved my capital to the fifth core city on the south shore across the channel from the original capital (again, only three spaces away) and my "colony" expenses decreased from 230 to 29.

Wow!

So five cities on the continent north of the channel across from a south shore capital only cost 29, but 10 cities on the continent south of the channel across from a north shore capital cost 230?

How exactly are "colony" expenses calculated? Do they go up exponentially after a certain number of cities on the non-capital continent? Why are 10 cities on a non-capital continent so much more costly than 5?

[snoopy369]

Colony expenses = similar to maintenance costs, except only apply for number of cities on each continent separately. So each continent, 1 city = no cost, 2 cities = small cost, 3 cities = slightly larger cost, 5 cities = starting to get up there, etc.

The cost *per city* increases with each additional city (similar to maintenance) so that's why it seems exponential.

[Wiglaf]

10 is a lot more than 5.

[ZEE]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Generally I think that a good economy is not that hard to manage, just use courthouses, intelligently adjust your commerce rates, and intelligently build a forbidden palace, and you'll be fine.

by the time we get courthouses the AI outnumbers the number of cities 2-1 even with the Oracle pop-rush.

In an effort to halt ICS and warmongering, Firaxis has (unintentionally?) forced EVERYONE to warmonger to win on any level above Noble. and unless you keep to the same lame-ass axeman rush tactic in every damn game from now until Civ 5.

Goddammit this has pissed me off for a long time and BtS has made it even worse with colonies. what the hell is wrong with those idiots at Firaxis anyways? I want to play this damn game WITHOUT maintanence at all or at least I want the old corruption model back, FTW.

You know it is very damn sad that the only way they can think of to stop a player from kicking their precious AI's ass is to hire people like Blake to make it actually fight all the while giving it all sorts of crazy bonuses and player handicaps. This maintenence system is the absolute worst corruption model i have ever seen in the history of this franchise and it makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever except for the reasons i have described above.

[onodera]

Maybe you shouldn't incur colony costs if the cities belong to the same culture borders blob?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by snoopy369
The cost *per city* increases with each additional city (similar to maintenance) so that's why it seems exponential.

Actually, that would make it seem quadratic.

[mdrago]

I think AAHZ is rigth.
Since CIV2 I have been an empire builder type of player. Since BTS I'm starting to warmonger... rushing prats by 1300 and taking out the closest Civ to guarantee some space for the time when i have some money to expand (BTW, why did the take "creative" from August in BTS?).

In BTS the AI is building cities much faster than in warlods, and leaving little space to expand, thus, forcing to warmonger.

City mantenance in Monarch and up is simply insane!
I don't understand why the difficulty setting are simply based on penaltys rather than better AI gameplay.
In Prince and below is a ride... In Monarch you are heavily handicaped but still your rival is the AI.
Above Monarch "you play againt the penaltys not the AI"

Perhaps, as AAHZ says, Firaxis add a lot of new bonuses to the AI and new penaltys for the human player.

[olelukoie]

I've looked at the code and found a way to turn colony maintenance off. Look at the functions:

int CvCity::calculateColonyMaintenance() const
{
	return (calculateColonyMaintenanceTimes100() / 100);
}

int CvCity::calculateColonyMaintenanceTimes100() const
{
	if (GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_NO_VASSAL_STATES))
	{
		return 0;
	}

	CvCity* pCapital = GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getCapitalCity();
	if (pCapital && pCapital->area() == area())
	{
		return 0;
	}

	int iNumCitiesPercent = 100;

	iNumCitiesPercent *= (getPopulation() + 17);
	iNumCitiesPercent /= 18;

	iNumCitiesPercent *= GC.getWorldInfo(GC.getMapINLINE().getWorldSize()).getColonyMaintenancePercent();
	iNumCitiesPercent /= 100;

	iNumCitiesPercent *= GC.getHandicapInfo(getHandicapType()).getColonyMaintenancePercent();
	iNumCitiesPercent /= 100;

	int iNumCities = (area()->getCitiesPerPlayer(getOwnerINLINE()) - 1) * iNumCitiesPercent;
	
	int iMaintenance = (iNumCities * iNumCities) / 100;

	iMaintenance = min(iMaintenance, GC.getHandicapInfo(getHandicapType()).getMaxColonyMaintenance() * 100);

	return iMaintenance;
}

As you can see, if you switch off Vassal states, the colony maintenance will always be zero. So, if you like to play archipelago maps or like to conquer territories on other continents, just disable Vassal State.

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by Arator
This would never happen in the real world. Cities across the Bosphorus (in Europe) from Istanbul (in Asia) would not regard themselves as "colonies" and seek to become independant of Istanbul's influence, a culturally dominant mega-city (as was my capital). And yet, this is what BTS's new "colony" expense system imposes.

Another example would be Japan. It would not be reasonable that cities in the smaller islands North and South from Honshu decided that they are colonies and want to be independent. As far as I know they considere themselves very Japanese.

Or Crete in Greece, Corsica in France, Balear Islands in Spain, just to name a few examples.

[olelukoie]

I think all this examples are not correct. In terms of the game, real world Asia and Europe are the same land mass and Bosphorus doesn't split it into two ones. As for relatively small islands - they're small enough to not cause significant colony maintenance. Even if they are far from the main continent, they would have only one or two cities, which doesn't trigger enormous colony maintenance cost.

But anyway I agree that colony maintenance should take into account the distance between land masses and possible cultural borders overlapping.

[patcon]

Originally posted by olelukoie
I think all this examples are not correct. In terms of the game, real world Asia and Europe are the same land mass and Bosphorus doesn't split it into two ones. As for relatively small islands - they're small enough to not cause significant colony maintenance. Even if they are far from the main continent, they would have only one or two cities, which doesn't trigger enormous colony maintenance cost.

But anyway I agree that colony maintenance should take into account the distance between land masses and possible cultural borders overlapping.

So a Eurasian empire with disjoint sections on the Baltic and on the Pacific doesn't incur this added cost, but an empire extending from China through Indochina and Indonesia to Australia and New Zealand would? Even though the first empire is clearly two distinct regions and the second is just as clearly only one.

I agree that colony maintenance should only come into play if the two regions are not part of the same connected cultural boundary. Yes, that means that a region could start out as a colony and then be absorbed into the motherland as cultural borders expand.

While "separate land masses?" is easier to determine, "shared border" shouldn't be that much harrder. Please don't respond, "Well then, why don't you do it?" I purchased the game to play it, not to be the (unpaid) one to fix it.

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by patcon
So a Eurasian empire with disjoint sections on the Baltic and on the Pacific doesn't incur this added cost, but an empire extending from China through Indochina and Indonesia to Australia and New Zealand would? Even though the first empire is clearly two distinct regions and the second is just as clearly only one.

That's odd. Isn't it? It means that if the UK owns Western Europe, they will have to pay a lot of maintenance costs despite being clearly inside the same cultural borders. But that Canada owning South America with the US and Mexico in between would not have to pay a single gold of extra cost. To me that looks not only illogical, but also unfun.

Originally posted by patcon
I agree that colony maintenance should only come into play if the two regions are not part of the same connected cultural boundary. Yes, that means that a region could start out as a colony and then be absorbed into the motherland as cultural borders expand.

Right! That's IMHO the right way to define it. For example, you can check if they could have a trade route without open borders. It they can (which would be the case of UK owning part of France) then there is no additional cost. If they can't (like Canada owning Argentina) then the additional costs are added. If later Canada conquers all America then there will be no additional costs for the cities in Argentina.