Late Game Economy Concerns

[pdxsean]

It'd be great if garrisoned units didn't cost maintenance. I have the social policy that gives one happiness for each garrisoned unit, but I've had to delete so many units I can't garrison them. If they were free to garrison, it would give a nice bonus for us peaceniks.

Now that I'm in peacetime again I have a six ship navy, two plane air force, ten unit land army, and three workers. My navy all have massive experience so I don't really want to delete them. Only half of my cities get a garrisoned unit, which is a shame, but what're you going to do?

The biggest thing for me was getting my head wrapped around the 1 unit 1 gold thing that has changed. With all the changes I've heard about, maintenance costs never came up. Understanding that and making a few changes has really made a huge difference and I feel more in control. Since I played at the second-highest difficulty level on Civ IV, it was pretty embarrassing to think I couldn't start on medium level for V...

[pdxsean]

What I have done in my 1st (ongoing) game is annex my puppet states one at a time, waiting until the courthouse is built before annexing the next.

This has turned out to be excellent advice. One thing I didn't understand is that when you make a puppet state, all your avoiding is a one-time penalty. A one-time penalty that is easily reversed with a courthouse. I thought there were long-term penalties to ruling occupied cities on top of the standard happiness buffs. Once I figured that out, a lot of this made more sense. Too bad I didn't find out before these puppet states went hog wild with military buildings. I'm disappointed there's no "destruct" option for already built buildings. That's a unrealistic change imo as in real life scrapping buildings happens all the time in the guise of budget cuts and such.

Anyway thanks again for the great advice.

[binTravkin]

You have to realise that in civ the buildings are more like institutions, not real buildings.
And even if they were, scrapping a temple for example is going to cause serious outrage (not just minus the happiness it gave as a "building") in a usual non-modern population.

[yin26]

A one-time penalty that is easily reversed with a courthouse.

I absolutely agree that this could be explained better. This, by the way, is the reason you cannot rush buy a courthouse. I disagree with that decision, personally, but you'll notice that this is the one building you cannot rush. But now you have the context for that design.

I also like the idea of garrisoned units not costing maintenance, but upon further reflection what would happen is that the person with the most number of cities could have the largest sitting army, which could then mobilize at the drop of a hat and just wipe the map clean. Another problem is that Civ5 is specifically designed to take the battles AWAY from the cities. Allowing units to park in them would be antithetical to that goal. Finally, some players, particularly early on in their experience curve, could easily find themselves in "gold traps" where they didn't realize clearly that suddenly they might be drowning in deficit just by moving their units out of the cities.

Still, I understand the impulse for that idea...

[pdxsean]

I absolutely agree that this could be explained better. This, by the way, is the reason you cannot rush buy a courthouse.

I feel bad for people who have to figure it out on their own. The implication is that puppet states are almost like ... the word is slipping from me now, but in Europa Universalis you can have puppet states that have to give you half their gold and other tributes. I thought this was Civ V's version of that. Instead it's just a way to put off the unhappiness bonus. It's a good idea now that I understand it... keep a puppet state until the war ends, and then quickly change them over one-by-one before they build a bunch of crap I'd never build.

I also like the idea of garrisoned units not costing maintenance, but upon further reflection what would happen is that the person with the most number of cities could have the largest sitting army

Very well explained, that makes perfect sense.

I'm excited that there's a whole new set of rules to learn and interactions to discover.

[pdxsean]

You have to realise that in civ the buildings are more like institutions, not real buildings.
And even if they were, scrapping a temple for example is going to cause serious outrage (not just minus the happiness it gave as a "building") in a usual non-modern population.

I was thinking more along the lines of barracks and military yards and museums, the sort of things governments shut down in tough times. Or more abstract policies like social services, which in real life aren't buildings either, but they are represented by things like granaries and monuments in the game, and do suffer in real life during down times. Maybe mothballing them would be a more realistic idea, but the basic concept in-game would be presenting a realistic option imo. Isn't it pretty much the improvement equivalent of deleting a unit?

[Nikolai]

I feel bad for people who have to figure it out on their own. The implication is that puppet states are almost like ... the word is slipping from me now, but in Europa Universalis you can have puppet states that have to give you half their gold and other tributes. I thought this was Civ V's version of that. Instead it's just a way to put off the unhappiness bonus. It's a good idea now that I understand it... keep a puppet state until the war ends, and then quickly change them over one-by-one before they build a bunch of crap I'd never build.

If you want to win by culture, you must under no circumstance have more core cities than 3-4, the rest needs to be puppets. Puppets are great for getting SPs fast, and winning by culture.

[pdxsean]

If you want to win by culture, you must under no circumstance have more core cities than 3-4, the rest needs to be puppets. Puppets are great for getting SPs fast, and winning by culture.

Wow, I hadn't thought of the SP cost increase being tied to the number of cities. Thank goodness I did all my social policy changes before I switched those puppet states over. Sounds like the cultural victory would be a pretty tough one to achieve, what with the puppet states burning your money on their worthless military academies and forges and whatnot.

[Nikolai]

I've never won it myself, but I know it has been done countless times by other betas.

[pdxsean]

Once I implemented the suggestions from this thread, it was a pretty easy path to the space race victory. I could have bribed my way to diplomatic but that's always a last resort for me. Now, we'll see if the King difficulty is as beatable...

I am a little disappointed at the lack of replay, that was something I really liked. And not being able to see a breakdown of my score was kind of sad too. Sure, I had 1800 points, but why? Knowing that great wonders are weighted heavier than population is all and good, but I want ratios damnit!

[yin26]

Seriously, jump to Emperor. Add at least 20% more Major Civs. Don't pick any island maps.

I've won Space and Domination several times. Never kept puppets, which made the Cultural victory seemingly impossible. I will try it soon, though.

[Jaybe]

pdxsean, another inspiration came to me as I contemplate my future invasion of Siam (he's on the same continent and has the ONLY source of coal thereon -- it's a "small" world on this 1st game of mine). When you conquer a city and the puppet governor is finished building his monument, trash any production-heavy improvements as soon as you see him doing anything you disapprove of. Of course, it may be well to station a worker or 2 nearby for when you want to fix things up.

[pdxsean]

Yin, I started a second game (like eight hours ago now) and it's only on King level. Right now I feel like I'm in good shape, I'm not in the lead or anything so I don't feel like it's too easy. Still good for getting a hang of the new features.

Jaybe I'm not sure what you mean about trashing any production-heavy improvements. How would I trash them? What I am planning right now is along the same lines, in that I will keep an eye on my puppet states, and if they start producing something I don't like I'll know it's time to swoop in and take over. Although, to be honest, if I have 5 spare happiness (or 6 maybe at King difficulty) I'll probably just switch them over right away so I can micromanage their production.

[-SafaN-]

by converting all their improvements to trade posts you can essentially stop their growth and production. This would give you more time to prepare an annexation before they finish building those buildings.

edit: iirc (don't have the game yet) you can pillage anywhere. So it would be easier to pillage with a military unit than use one of you workers who have better work to do probably.
It also gives gold to boot ...

[pdxsean]

Oh, OK, now I get it. Yeah that's a good idea. You could also bring a worker in and start to redo the existing improvement and then stop it. The change happens instantly and the hex would be left with an unfinished improvement. This would also be good for helping to keep their population under control if there are a lot of farms.

Pretty sure there's no gold in pillaging in V tho.