This is just a follow up to the Q&A Session on 12/1/14 (thank you for answering my question), but I must admit based on how the game is structured I already knew the answer. I think its just a balancing issue.



After about a 120 hours of game play I simply don't see a tall game play as being competitive to wide (deep). For instance, I tried to achieve a scientific victory playing tall and its near impossible, even with the Vaulters. But playing wide, it was very easy. This also seems to the consensus on the forums.The only real deterrent is the expansion disapproval, which is easy to overcome with a few buildings like the sewer system, market, and now the new minor faction bonus. But even considering the empire does fall into an unhappy state, the 20% reduction is simply too low to offset the benefits of more cities. Lets look at the FIDSI separately (without diving too deep into numbers).



Food: Population grows at a much faster rate the lower the number. So even with the a -20% food, you will be increasing your overall population much faster playing wide.



Industry: This seems to be balanced in my opinion because the primary purpose of industry is for buildings. Concerning unit production, a few well developed cities can handle unit production just as well, if not better then many less developed cities.



Dust: Again I believe dust is balanced because of building upkeep costs. Don't see a need to change this.



Science: This is really where I see the main problem being. You simply can't keep up in science output with larger empires. And once you fall behind in science, its a domino effect and you fall behind in everything from production to military capability.



Influence: I really haven't paid much attention to influence to comment either way, so I just wont comment.



The boroughs argument: While the boroughs do provide substantial bonuses once you have enough of them, its simply too expensive and too time consuming to offset the negative. What we need to consider is that all the time and industry put into the boroughs is taking away from time that can be spent building other buildings. That coupled with the unhappiness factor until you get enough boroughs just doesn't make it a viable strategy.



Suggestions (either individually on in some combination)



1: Decrease the cost of boroughs (or decrease the negative effects)

2: Take away the population requirement for boroughs

2: Make the cost of science proportional to the number of cities

3: Increase empire expansion disapproval rate per city

4: Lower the happiness boosts from buildings that lower disapproval

5: Increase the % reductions for an unhappy population



I can't comment on the exact numbers as I'm not familiar enough with them, but I think focusing on balancing boroughs alone should do the trick. I suspect that the main purpose of the boroughs is to provide an opportunity for a tall gameplay, but its simply not balanced. Especially when you consider the fact that playing tall also means you share less borders, so attacking an enemy who is about to achieve a victory condition becomes almost impossible to do.



I know that there are many bugs and other glaring balance issues that need attention, but I can't help but feel so much of what the game is trying to achieve is being overlooked simply because tall game play is not viable.

I agree with several of your ideas - especially decoupling the population requirement from borough construction.

The borough cost curve could also be addressed.



My take on this is adjusting the approval increases/decreases (:approval and happiness bonuses/maluses (effects):

Modify happiness malus/bonus to be hyperbolic from -100% (at 0 approval) to +100% (at 100 approval); so production will range from 0% to 200%.

The formula: Bonus to Production = +[(50-approval)/50]^3





Base approval = 50

Palace gives +10 approval, default in every city (counteracts the -10 expansion disapproval for the first city)

Expansion disapproval of -10 for each city, applied to every city (no expansion disapproval reduction tech, e.g. bread and circuses), applied to every city

-1 for each population in the whole empire, applied to every city

+2 for every district tile but no approval increases from district levels, applied only to the relevant city



[Side-note:Boroughdistrictstobechangedsothatyoucanbuildtightforlevels(providingmoredust,scienceandinfluence);orbuildflatformoreexploitations(providingfood,industryanddust)-thisisachievedbylevelsnolongeraffectingapproval,andadjustingthebaseFIDSIpertileandtheFIDSIbonusesperlevel]



Empire happiness/unhappiness should also give bonuses/maluses to military units' morale (morale affects attack and defense values)



Balance other approval increases around this, so that happiness generally remains a scarce commodity.



So in effect, the tall empire is the happy empire.

Thank you Tigregalis. The numbers I'm not good with! And your suggestion for tying unit moral with happiness is brilliant and even solves my second biggest concern highlighted below.



Something major that I neglected to mention before was strategic resources.



While luxury items are tied to the number of cities strategic resources aren't. This isn't a big problem with the resources required for buildings because they scale well and are balanced, but that is not the case when it comes to units.



A wide empire can always steamroll a tall one based solely on its ability to field more units with upgrades from strategic resources. While one might argue that its only logical for a larger empire to field more armies, we aren't necessarily talking about army size, but unit quality (which should be equal).



Consider this hypothetical scenario (tho rather exaggerated). Player A decides to he's only sticking with his starting city which has 1 strategic resource. Player B expands to 5 cities and then decides to attack Player A. Player B be access to 4 strategic resources from the 5 provinces he controls. If we put the number of units aside and go so far as to assume they both are equal in army size, there is no way Player A can repel that attack. That 1 strategic resource is simply not enough to equip even a 6 man army. Fortifications also become irrelevant becomes Player B can just siege all the way to 0 because reinforcements aren't coming anyways.

A few thoughts on this...



Capturing and controlling regions ("going wide") is good for the game. It encourages competition for resources and cities (since the number of regions is finite) and discourages turtling. If you are playing on very large maps with a lot of regions, the game will favor expansion over development.



However, rapid expansion should be an issue and you make a good point that there are a lot of easily accessible fixers that are available too soon in the game (IMO).



A couple ideas (in addition to Black's):

• Make Settlers more expensive to build. This will make the decision to grow harder.
• Push back/remove some of the Approval techs so it's difficult to manage a large empire unit later in the game.
• Rather than, or in addition to Expansion Disapproval, use Sins of a Solar Empire's "distance" mechanic. The farther away a city is from the capitol, the more disapproval. So one region away is -10, but 2 regions away is -20, etc. This is applied to the individual cities.
• Conquered cities should always have some animosity toward their new overlords.
• Harvesting luxuries should be necessary to maintain on a large empire.
  
  

I really like the above ideas of using city population and Districts to have an "overcrowding" mechanic to drive approval rather than strictly the "level up" mechanic. Each population could add disapproval, while each district level offsets. Lets say -5 per population and -10 per District level.



Also one of the biggest problems is the way the game allows you to rapidly turn a new city into a boom town using the Cheap FIDSI structures and buyouts. How easy is it to settle a city and have the key Era 1 FIDSI structures up by the next turn?

Propbuddha, its not so much that I think the wide game play is bad for the game, I just think its very limiting and one dimensional. The game mechanics are there to promote both types of game play, its just a matter of balance to make tall a viable option.

A couple of things worth considering when balancing tall vs wide are:



-if they are going to use boroughs as a way to balance it, they have to make sure boroughs cannot be used just as effectively by wide players since that would defeat the purpose.



-most importantly, be careful not to overdo it like Civ V did. They went so overboard with balancing for tall and limiting happiness tall became pretty much the only option. Even for warmongering, the only way to handle penalties of going wide was to raze the majority of cities you conquered and leave barren lands behind. Pretty much everyone had to play like the Cultists.



So while I do agree tall could be a bit stronger, I am very conservative with my support for radical changes.

BlackW3 wrote:
Propbuddha, its not so much that I think the wide game play is bad for the game, I just think its very limiting and one dimensional.

"Limiting and one-dimensional" sounds bad for the game to me



I just wanted to point out that "Wide" needs to be better over the course of the game to encourage interaction and competition among the players. It's just a question of when it needs to be better and how much better it needs to be.



I think we're on the same page that it comes too early in the game.

You're probably right, its hard to imagine playing to the end of the game with only 3-4 cities. And with further consideration I think the main problem is the early game. I just hate knowing I have to get a second/third city out by turn 20 and keep expanding to keep pace or lose the game.

Northwoods wrote:
-if they are going to use boroughs as a way to balance it, they have to make sure boroughs cannot be used just as effectively by wide players since that would defeat the purpose.

Perhaps, borough cost curve as a function of the total number of boroughs in the empire, rather than the number of boroughs in the city (or some combination of both).

Propbuddha wrote:
Also one of the biggest problems is the way the game allows you to rapidly turn a new city into a boom town using the Cheap FIDSI structures and buyouts. How easy is it to settle a city and have the key Era 1 FIDSI structures up by the next turn?

Scale building costs with the number of cities, perhaps.



So, my thoughts, in summary:

1. No approval from district levels (i.e. level 3 or 2 districts are no different from level 1 districts when it comes to approval)

2. Approval bonus from borough, applied only to the relevant city. (e.g. City X has 3 boroughs, for 3x5=15 approval)

3. Borough costs rise with the number of boroughs in the empire. (e.g. City X has just added a new borough; the cost for a borough in all cities has now increased)

4. Approval malus from empire population. (e.g. Empire A has 30 population in total, for 30*-1=-30 approval)

5. City improvement costs scale with the number of cities. (e.g. it costs 60 industry for mill foundry when you have one city, but approximately 180 industry when you have three cities)

6. More city improvements are unique improvements, enabling specialisation of cities (or one mega-city).

7. Approval malus for number of cities. (Expansion disapproval).

8. Happiness affects troop morale.

9. District levels add significantly more dust, science and influence. (e.g. +3 each per level). Exploitation tiles of all kinds on the other hand have more food and industry, but less dust, science and influence. Thus it becomes a balance between gaining levels for FI and gaining exploitations for DSI.

10. Happiness techs and other modifiers become accessible at key points in the game, encouraging expansion at that point in the game. I prefer raw approval additions to malus percentage reductions (e.g. bread and circuses).

11. Hyperbolic production modifier, making happiness much more significant. All production modifiers applying at the city level based on the city's approval. Trade route modifiers and morale applying empire-wide based on the empire approval.



Obviously, 2, 4, and 7 need to be numerically balanced. 4 (empire population malus) may even make 7 (number of cities malus) superfluous or excessive. 4 could also be applied as a city population malus, but that is worse for a single large-population city than an empire of many smaller-population cities. 3 and 5 might seem extreme, but I think it just needs to be appropriately numerically balanced.



I've also been toying with the idea of having production be dependent on both population and city tiles, rather than them being independent.

In other words, currently the way it works is: ProductionFIDSI = Population*PopulationFIDSI + CityTilesFIDSI

But I propose that it works like this: ProductionFIDSI = Population * CityTilesFIDSI

(with Tile FIDSI changed appropriately)

But I realise it's quite a radical change, but it's more of a separate consideration to the tall vs wide thing though.



An alternative is that ProductionFIDSI = Population*PopulationFIDSI but MaxProductionFIDSI = CityTilesFIDSI which is a sort of abstraction of the way it works in Civ (where you allocate workers to tiles).