The Symbiotic Nation: a Civ 'goal'

[Sandman]

But returns do multiply historically. I'm not very comfortable with a civ game that slows down the rate of advancement as the centuries progress, with ever greater artificial penalties on growth. Multiplication of rewards is very important in order to encourage large cities, whilst diminishing rewards will ultimately encourage hordes of small cities.

A game which artificially caps growth rates for leading civilizations loses some of the 'thrill of the chase' in catching up with rivals, or keeping your lead. I noticed a lack of this in civ3, with the minimum four turns tech advancement, and the reduced cost of techs for those behind in the tech tree.

A more realistic way of keeping growth in check would be to limit the opportunities for extremely large cities by reducing the amounts of arable land in the game, and making certain resources finite.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Nah, they tried in civ3 admittedly, but one look at the games of players like Aeson shows why ICS is very much alive and kicking should a player choose to use it.

I think Mr Baggins is referring to CtP2, where ICS is not possible, done by Government restrictions on no. of cities, monarchy 20, fascism/communism 35 etc and increasing city radius.

[LDiCesare]

CtP2's city limits is pretty annoying and unrealistic in my opinion, however. The best way to prevent people from ICSing is to make it extremely hard to keep territory far from the capital (not just unhappiness: rioting, civil war, spawning of a new civ which spans more than one city -think USA breaking from the UK).
City size is not a linear function of food, so growth has diminishing returns. The fact that once you have grown you no longer have diminishing returns doesn't matter much. You'd obtain exactly the same results by slowing growth even more.
I think MOO3 has settings for planets to behave as mixed, autarcic (is that an English word? looks so ugly in English) or specialized, each leading to its own strengths and weaknesses (read -or just scan- Dan's review).

[moomin]

I too wouldn't like hard limits on city growth - given that MM grows linearly with the number of cities you own in a Civ game, I'd very much like to be able to pursue a vertical, as opposed to horisontal, expansion strategy - crank your city size up as fast a possible and cram every single bit of synergy out of that as soon as possible.

I agree, however, that there should be diminishing returns for pop once the land the city controls is fully expoited.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by DrSpike


Nah, they tried in civ3 admittedly, but one look at the games of players like Aeson shows why ICS is very much alive and kicking should a player choose to use it.

Far from presenting diminishing returns it is expansion that yields exponential long term resources, whereas it is in improving your city in fact you experience diminishing returns.

Amongst experienced civvers I guarantee you the power of expansion will bother them more than the 'bigger is better' problem you are discussing.

Well, thats a serious shame... I heard ICS'ing wasn't viable and had been replaced by REX'ing.

CtP & CtP2 don't have the ICS problem:

Empire expansion is limited in two ways...

Empire size

Capitol distance

Both are modifiable, by government, for both starting value and severity.

The penalty for exceeding either is unhappiness, and by proxy crime/corruption and waste.

For Empire size, the penalty is civ wide... so say you have a empire size cap of 10, with a penalty of 1 for each city thereafter, and you expand to 13 cities. You'll be faced with a -3 happiness in each of your cities.

The Capitol distance penalty is based on shortest travelled distance... including terrain and travel improvements (roads, rails etc.) The penalty applies to just that city.

For a given difficulty level, you can set riot and revolt levels... of unhappiness... you start off with a base happiness level, and the penalties can put you in defecit.

When the cities happiness dips into riot level, it no longer is productive, until it raises above riot level. Riots left too long can become revolts.

When a city reaches revolt level, it can split off and form another civ. When a revolt occurs, nearby unhappy cities can join the revolting city, in a chain reaction.

To see the best current happiness model in CtP2, look at the Cradle of Civilization mod.

MrBaggins

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Sandman
But returns do multiply historically. I'm not very comfortable with a civ game that slows down the rate of advancement as the centuries progress, with ever greater artificial penalties on growth. Multiplication of rewards is very important in order to encourage large cities, whilst diminishing rewards will ultimately encourage hordes of small cities.

A game which artificially caps growth rates for leading civilizations loses some of the 'thrill of the chase' in catching up with rivals, or keeping your lead. I noticed a lack of this in civ3, with the minimum four turns tech advancement, and the reduced cost of techs for those behind in the tech tree.

A more realistic way of keeping growth in check would be to limit the opportunities for extremely large cities by reducing the amounts of arable land in the game, and making certain resources finite.

Well... thats one way to look at it, but I think Brian Reynolds view is a better one...

In his article "The Poor Get Richer: The Ancient Art of Game Balance"

in the section

"Turn Offs" -- Negative Game Experiences

Brian writes
The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer. Similarly (though perhaps more surprisingly), it is dull to have to keep playing after you know you've "won." Players lose interest the moment the game ceases to be a competition and merely becomes a mopping up operation. Both of these first two problems are classic symptoms of what I call the "Rich get Richer" syndrome: the farther ahead a player is the easier it becomes to get further ahead, and the farther behind a player falls the harder it is for him to catch up. This is one of the easiest traps for a game system to fall into and one of the hardest to correct for. In "rich get richer" games, players may start on even ground, but once one-layer gains a slight advantage, the game system enters a positive feedback loop which compounds that advantage until the player is unstoppable.

The problem with bigger cities not having diminishing returns is that success begets too much success. A player who's gotten into a 'winning situation' in terms of getting to larger cities first is automatically guaranteed success. Often this 'victory' happens somewhere between 20% and 40% along the tech tree, given what I've seen.

You say that it is somehow unfulfilling to have an elastic effect, pulling the leader back... either in catching the leader, or staying ahead.

Brian Reynolds disagrees with this viewpoint in this article Help The Poor Get Richer

My contention is, that given a better challenge, that you won't care that there is an elastic property to competition, just that there is more competition when you're the leader (which is, lets face it, just about the default situation in civ) and that in the event that you are behind, that the civs ahead will not be in a position to run away with it, at the same degree.

Globally reducing the amount of growth resources DOES NOTHING: every player is in the same boat. The human player is (probably) in an advantageous position, since he will likely find the (more difficult to exploit) extra growth and get ahead... and hence, stay ahead.

MrBaggins

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
CtP2's city limits is pretty annoying and unrealistic in my opinion, however. The best way to prevent people from ICSing is to make it extremely hard to keep territory far from the capital (not just unhappiness: rioting, civil war, spawning of a new civ which spans more than one city -think USA breaking from the UK).
City size is not a linear function of food, so growth has diminishing returns. The fact that once you have grown you no longer have diminishing returns doesn't matter much. You'd obtain exactly the same results by slowing growth even more.
I think MOO3 has settings for planets to behave as mixed, autarcic (is that an English word? looks so ugly in English) or specialized, each leading to its own strengths and weaknesses (read -or just scan- Dan's review).

It doesn't seem like you've, in fact, looked too hard at CtP2. There *ARE* capitol distance penalties, and they *CAN AND DO* cause rioting and revolts (spawning of new civs that span more than one city.) Play Cradle 1.35 on a 200x100 gigantic map... and see for yourself.

City size and growth is a diminishing return, but the associated rewards are not. The growth system is also tied into the rewards that larger cities produce in multiplying quanties... Bigger cities can build the improvements necessary for growth, or produce the resources necessary to improve the surroundings quicker... growth is self-perpetuating, and not necessarily diminishing in the manner which you describe: the science advantage that bigger cities produce must be considered too.

MrBaggins

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by moomin
I too wouldn't like hard limits on city growth - given that MM grows linearly with the number of cities you own in a Civ game, I'd very much like to be able to pursue a vertical, as opposed to horisontal, expansion strategy - crank your city size up as fast a possible and cram every single bit of synergy out of that as soon as possible.

I agree, however, that there should be diminishing returns for pop once the land the city controls is fully expoited.

Its a great concept... it could be achieved by having a separate 'path' of government types that, instead of allowing for yet bigger empire sizes, keeps tight empire size controls but gives more production and growth bonuses.

A choice for a peaceful builder. Choice is always good.

MrBaggins

[MrBaggins]

Thought for the day: Civ... Simulation or Simulacrum?

First and foremost, its a game... and by definition needs to adhere to the 'fun first' motif. Historical accuracy is impossible to achieve, and undesirable: we want to be able to make *our* history. Handicapping trailing civs almost certainly ensures that 'history' is remarkably short.

MrBaggins

[LDiCesare]

Originally posted by MrBaggins


It doesn't seem like you've, in fact, looked too hard at CtP2. There *ARE* capitol distance penalties, and they *CAN AND DO* cause rioting and revolts (spawning of new civs that span more than one city.) Play Cradle 1.35 on a 200x100 gigantic map... and see for yourself.

City size and growth is a diminishing return, but the associated rewards are not. The growth system is also tied into the rewards that larger cities produce in multiplying quanties... Bigger cities can build the improvements necessary for growth, or produce the resources necessary to improve the surroundings quicker... growth is self-perpetuating, and not necessarily diminishing in the manner which you describe: the science advantage that bigger cities produce must be considered too.

MrBaggins

I did look a lot at CtP2, and played Cradle too (until it crashes my computer). I definitely do not like CtP2 on huge maps because the city number limits per government prevents you from using the space effectively. That is truly horrible in the Diamond Age, when building a single undersea city will make your whole empire riot despite being in Ecotopia or Virtual Democracy. It effectively puts a cap on the number of cities you can have and strongly encourages nasty warfare (destroying all opponents' cities). I don't like that.
The distance from capitol effect exists, and exists as in civ. Its effect, however, is poor. I get more riots out of poorly managed slaver cities than from far away outposts. There should be no way to maintain a far away colony unless you have appropriate media/travel techs. When a city riots, they either become barbs or a new civ, but won't join an existing civ (barring one wonder effect). At least I never saw that happen to me, and I did play a lot of CtP2 games. I contend that several cities together should split and declare themselves a new civ, not just a single one. Something more among the lines of what happens in civ when a capital is taken and an empire splits in two (except that the trigger shouldn't be capital lost but accumulated weariness from the colony due to big distance and whatever social problems can be modelled). If they do in CtP2, it is fine, but, again, I never saw it happen.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by LDiCesare

I did look a lot at CtP2, and played Cradle too (until it crashes my computer). I definitely do not like CtP2 on huge maps because the city number limits per government prevents you from using the space effectively. That is truly horrible in the Diamond Age, when building a single undersea city will make your whole empire riot despite being in Ecotopia or Virtual Democracy. It effectively puts a cap on the number of cities you can have and strongly encourages nasty warfare (destroying all opponents' cities). I don't like that.
The distance from capitol effect exists, and exists as in civ. Its effect, however, is poor. I get more riots out of poorly managed slaver cities than from far away outposts. There should be no way to maintain a far away colony unless you have appropriate media/travel techs. When a city riots, they either become barbs or a new civ, but won't join an existing civ (barring one wonder effect). At least I never saw that happen to me, and I did play a lot of CtP2 games. I contend that several cities together should split and declare themselves a new civ, not just a single one. Something more among the lines of what happens in civ when a capital is taken and an empire splits in two (except that the trigger shouldn't be capital lost but accumulated weariness from the colony due to big distance and whatever social problems can be modelled). If they do in CtP2, it is fine, but, again, I never saw it happen.

I was using the 200x100 cradle example as a situation where revolts in the AI would be most likely. Your game (and milage) might vary. I have save where two civs are having multiple cities revolt, due to unhappiness after overextention.

The government cap settings in Cradle were actually designed for the huge(large) map.

I find your stand against semi-hard limits on empire size to be amusing.

ICS has long (and rightly so) been declared an enemy to game balance. The only way to combat them... is to attack the issue directly: empire size and capitol distance caps.

Capitol Distance Penalties alone are insufficient... all you need to do is pack your cities closer together in that case...

I view it as incredibly realistic to have an empire size cap, representing the limits of the government's capability to bureaucratically deal with an empire. The limit is only semi-hard, anyway; you can alter the sliders to reduce the workday, or increase rations or wages... to offset the unhappiness gained by empire size abuse.

Speaking of it encouraging brutal warfare... perhaps so, but in my viewpoint in pre-modern era's, need to give the city defender the advantage, in the interest of game balance, and game extention.

If you are too poor a planner to reserve some bureaucratic capacity to deal with conquered cities, then perhaps you deserve the riots that you incur. Its a very simple matter to code conditions for the AI to 'reserve future city capacity' when it is fighting, and is confident of success or knows war is imminent with a weaker opponent.

MrBaggins

[Dauphin]

Re: Re: The Symbiotic Nation: a Civ 'goal'

Originally posted by DrSpike


My compliments, it's a fantastic line. However it's not entirely true. In fact if I had to choose one strategy that dominates civ based games its constant expansion, often referred to an infinite city sleaze (ICS). A good player can beat any of the main civ games without having more than 1 or 2 big cities.....not only can they do it in many circumstances it is the best strategy.

The same basic problem is still there. More is better. If you attempt ICS but only have as many cities as your rivals it will not work.

[DrSpike]

But my point was that, contrary to what Baggins posted, true increasing returns comes from expansion, and decreasing returns from improving your existing cities. I think this is pretty critical for the discussion.

[MrBaggins]

DrSpike... you have just ignored the comments regarding empire size capping and empire distance capping, in CtP2. The downsides are radically less avoidable than in Civ3, apparently.

The empire size capacity increases at a slower rate than the quickest players ability to expand, ergo your ability to expand is limited, ergo improvement by growth of existing cities is paramount.

Your 'point' is that 50 size 1 cities are more productive than 1 size 50 city. Thats true in Civ2.

CtP2 has a slightly different city model, which means that this isn't necessarily so: improvements *can* have flat support costs with multiplied benefits, so to break even you have to be a certain size... this can mean that an improvement has to be built in a city a particular size to break even, and the 50 size 1's will never receive them. If improvements in general require city size for viable gain is significant enough; particularly if it relates to science, then delaying growth by 'settler horde' is a useless tactic.

Because a Civ2 centric world says 'expansionism is always better', doesn't mean every game engine is plagued with the flaw.

Personally... I think a choice is a good addition to the game: give a government path for both the builders and the expansionists... it can be done by having different respective governments, one with tight city caps and generous bonuses, and one with generous city caps and tight bonuses. Players would choose, but not be better off (necessarily) by choosing one path over another.

MrBaggins

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Personally... I think a choice is a good addition to the game: give a government path for both the builders and the expansionists... it can be done by having different respective governments, one with tight city caps and generous bonuses, and one with generous city caps and tight bonuses. Players would choose, but not be better off (necessarily) by choosing one path over another.

MrBaggins

Every civ game I have played already does this. Whilst the increasing returns I speak of from expansion exist there is usually a balance in the form of we love the king day, or something similar. The key is to pick a strategy and use it to the best of its capabilities.

I don't think there is a bigger is better problem. You can either expand a lot and go that route or have fewer built up cities......both are viable in all civ games I have played. You would expect your empire to grow and get more productive over time either way........if you can't expand due to game restrictions then you improve existing cities, which will hence become more productive...........I am having trouble making your gripe reasonable.