Balancing: City rush (& later Modding discussion)

[aqvamare]

edit: The thread developed later to a discuss about modding to make this game better.

edit2: thanks to the forum mods, they are faster than a flash




Hi Folks,

After playing serveral runs with the demo. I relaised, that it is really important to rush town at the start. The advantage from many town empire are to big.

plus points of a small town (5 people)
- 1 farm
- 1 market
- 1 manaspring
- 1 ressource building (temple/special unti/armory/income)
- 1 libary
- higher movement rate for troops thanks to own culture area

later you can some of them specc into money/food/mana, but a small town give you all you need,

negative points of a small town...
- nothing

Please look to civilization 5 at the way they made a solution, at the moment the games plays city wise like Civilization 1/2/3 city spamming.

[Poopfaust]

No question that spamming is the way to go, for now. That is why multiplayer is the way to go. You both spam like crazy and see what happens. Either develop gigantic armies and fight it out, or send raiding parties to each other to slow down settler production and increase militaryproduction.., the ole' Civilization balancing act.

I think that like Civilization, in a short time the developer's (based on feedback from the forum mostly Civ people like you and I) will fix these 'little things." As you know, the developers right now could impose a massive penalty for having too many cities and for being to far away from Capital; just like Civilization. And that would fix spamming.

For now, the intital release of this game is major major major AWESOME! Presently, I give it 7.5 stars out of 10. In a short while with ex-Civ feedback to the developers on the forum.., heck, 2 to 3 patches, this could be a 10 star game.

I think games like this only come along every 4-5 years. Man, I only have the demo and I am freaking hooked. When the full version is out.., this will be as addictive as Yoohoo and Pizza.

[Buladelu]

Please look to civilization 5 at the way they made a solution, at the moment the games plays city wise like Civilization 1/2/3 city spamming.

Their solution isn't that good, I've read many analytics about that. Basically their system of city limit just annoys players and doesn't really limit anything unlike Civ 4 system.

Anyway. I haven't seen any real working system of limiting player's cities IF he can build them anywhere AND their number isn't limited. Examplex of good way to do it are Rise of Nations or Rise of Legends where each new city requires new technology, costs more or even can be build only at special place.

[Sunjah_Kahn]

Their solution isn't that good, I've read many analytics about that. Basically their system of city limit just annoys players and doesn't really limit anything unlike Civ 4 system.

Anyway. I haven't seen any real working system of limiting player's cities IF he can build them anywhere AND their number isn't limited. Examplex of good way to do it are Rise of Nations or Rise of Legends where each new city requires new technology, costs more or even can be build only at special place.

I like Civ a lot, love this demo and cannot wait for next week (bought the game last week), but I didn't play Civ until Civ IV.

I've always thought the penalty of maintenance being more and more the farther from the capitol was a great way of avoiding the "city-spam" aspect. There are times I've had games destroyed because I built too many too far away. I am far from any kind of expert, and don't have experience with Civ I, II or III, but I thought the system in IV was quite effective. I do have V, but haven't played it enough to really even know what they do with that situation in that game. I just think Civ IV plays so much better, I usually only go there to that game to get a "Civ fix".

Again, no expert, but a fan of the Civ games, and I would go with a system of penalty for too many or too far from capital, maybe extra tax or maintenance costs or something.

[hadberz]

Personally I have no issue with city spamming. If they do put in some limit I hope it's optional.

[Szeretni]

I think the current city system is good. There are at least the following soft limits for city spamming:
- Big and specialised cities are better because of the multiplier buildings
- Small cities deny tiles for more important cities (suboptimal because of the multipliers)
- Big cities deny tiles for small cities (small cities can’t construct buildings even if they have enough population because no tiles are available -> waste of food; cities grow regardless of the available tiles)

[Featauril]

Also, you have to feed your extra cities, so many of the buildings they build end up supporting themselves.

I think city growth also diminishes based on the number of cities.

[Kimarous]

- higher movement rate for troops thanks to own culture area

So THAT'S how my Goblin Archers got to the front lines so fast...

[Raxe]

Please no just no...... The way it works now is one of the reasons im looking forward to this so much. Civ's method of handling it is all well and good but civ is also a lot slower than this game is in the expansion department. The way we have it now is perfect it doesnt have as much meta management to it as civ and thats a damn good thing, we get to rapidly expand but that expansion falls off quickly especially if you think ahead.

Simply put "This is not civ dont make it civ if you want civ go back to civ dont corrupt this game with your idea's of how it should be just go play civ to get your busy body unneeded mechanics and come back to this play it the way it is thank you"

[GeneralGonzo]

I think most people here base their city spam fear on playing the demo.
With some more opponents per game and a higher AI level I guess it will be very difficult to hold cities against the AI. So spamming can get worse with AI level being higher....

[VDmitry]

I'm not sure how exactly demo (or even full game) works, but it is really not a problem to me yet.

First, there are several disadvantages to have many cities:

- you have to build many settlers, and that denies the build queue to other units
- small cities have less bonus from multipliers (you know there are buildings with them)
- not sure if cities count affect their growth
- full version with harder difficulty settings may have higher price for settlers, harder to expand into new territories, harder to defend (not much gold left for many settlers etc)

Second, if some penalty for cities count seems lovely, I have to say that introducing any true limit is likely very bad idea in Warlock. Because a real reason I did not go to major wars in Civilization(s) was either I did not like to manage all captured cities (too much management) or I did not want to have too big penalty (so there is no reason to expand so much). Warlock seems does not have any of these issues and if some penalty works (like dependency of city growth) it is just fine.

[VDmitry]

It doesn't seem that cities count affects their growth. But anyway, just won the demo and do not think that city spamming is a problem, even if it is a possibility.

[aqvamare]

I won the demo with catapult spamm, too. and i needed 3 fast town at the beginning for income (gem is must have) for icome. And i realized, that the game becomes easier and easier with more towns. There is even no negative feedback, when you conquer town from different fractions. There should some kind of revolt risk when you get as human monster or undead towns. I even could build trolls, thanks to the help of AI monster capital.

[Raxe]

I shall say this again Go back to civ 4/5(whatever floats your boat) and dont taint this game with systems it doesnt need.

-You want to change this based on a DEMO?????
-You want to change this without even knowing what difficulty this demo is??????
-you want to change this without playing against the final version of the ai?????
-you want to change this based on your experience with a static map in a game based on RANDOM MAPS????????
-You want to change this based soley upon the fact that you as a person accustomed to these games made a strategic decision to secure your empires future by building cities to get gold and food early to finance war later? = Kinda like going "Look i can do this and i dont think i should be able to so change this so i cant" little presumptuous of you dont you think?

The AI from what i have seen in videos and playing the demo itself is actually fairly good at the unit to unit fighting and building its own army up the only problem with the demo is we dont know what difficulty this is on. The other issue i take with this argument is that we can agree you rushed the AI right? Didnt even try pressing into the other worlds? Didnt explore the map at all? Didnt explore the tech tree?

This is probably the smallest map type in the game so your bound to get the advantage considering the distance you start from the other two oponents. Please consider the fact that the two AI start in a spot where they have to worry about not just eachother but roving giants and monsters of there ilk. From my experience with breaking past the Ratking empire i actually found a city that had fallen to a roving monster attack and was now controlled by the monster AI. Also from playing it was always fairly obvious that the Ratking was fighting not just me but the other AI as well considering he had been smart enough to place a city in prime position to wall the undead onto there little island seperate from the mainland.

If it still bothers you after you have played a few weeks of the full game and have beaten it with everything at max world size, Difficulty, Enemy wizards, Other worlds multiple times please feel free to pursue having someone make a mod incorporating more Civ mechanics. Hell i'll give you a suggested name for the mod "Warlock: The Mod of Civilization" feel free to ad lib that as you will.


So please wait until you have experienced the fullgame and all it has to offer before you pursue this more please.

[ditoLoco]

There is penalty if you have a city with different race: you get, i am not sure, 20-30% less gold

[Munkles]

I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents here into the discussion.

Ive been playing PC strategy games since the original Civ, and since that game ICS has been a "problem" since the grandfather of them all. The reason I put problem in quotes is because I believe the idea that ICS is anything other than the ultimate solution to domination style gameplay is frankly errant at best and simply wrong at worst.

Every game will always distil down to a core gameplay strategy which is simply superior to all others. For empire building strategy games ICS is that ultimate solution. I can appreciate game designs which seek to implement road blocks to limit or inherently hinder a players progress from that goal but to simply outright remove or limit that solution or strategy is IMHO the absolute wrong choice.

I do recognize that not everyone has the same desire to win through total domination and that sometimes on harder difficulty settings some games its either extremely difficult or even "impossible" to win that way but just as someone who plays domination style shouldnt ignore the other valid game victory scenarios I dont like the idea of having my best win scenario cut out from under me because people are worried that its effective.

ICS is often mis-understood, and is often a term which has a few different meanings to the point where if you were to ask a dozen people they would all likely differ on the finer points of ICS strategy. A smart domination style strategist will have their territory all mapped out allowing each city within their boarders to have the maximum room for growth. ICS has the inherant limiter of being a colossal time investment in late stages and is very rarely needed to achieve victory but more or less exists as an option for "completionists" or "perfectionists".

So I guess what im trying to say is rather than being upset that it looks like ICS is again going to be the surest form of victory the solution isnt to restrict assured victory to another strategy but rather be creative in your own play and enjoy the game the way you will.

Civ 5 was very good about providing win options for smaller introspectively focused empires and I see nothing here that leads me to believe it will be any different here either.

[saroumana]

For my part, city spamm is very unwelcome.

This screenshot Illustrate the problem.



Having to manage 40 or more city is annoying, not fun.

[Raxe]

^^^
Then build just 5 and raise any city you conquer and your problem is solved. Although i dont know if theres an ability to destroy cities outright ive never tried.....

[2Coats]

^^^
Then build just 5 and raise any city you conquer and your problem is solved. Although i dont know if theres an ability to destroy cities outright ive never tried.....

There is.

For my part, city spamm is very unwelcome.

Though if you dont want to play on large maps - dont. The choice is yours.

[Munkles]

^^^
Then build just 5 and raise any city you conquer and your problem is solved. Although i dont know if theres an ability to destroy cities outright ive never tried.....

There is.



Though if you dont want to play on large maps - dont. The choice is yours.

These fella's basically vocalize my point perfectly. Everyone has a unique perspective on what they consider "fun" and honestly that point where youre almost in total control of the map is in my mind the rewarding part of a game spanning possibly dozens of hours up till that point.

I wont deny it can sometimes feel tedius but its also something I personally find immense joy and happiness in.