I always give up playing because even if i focus on science as much as possible, i will reach the turn limit before or shortly after modern era. When i play the game, i feel that everything is way overpriced, it's crazy expensive to merge cities, the fast built anything, to build anything really. I'm at turn 262 right now. It cost 60k influence to merge a city, i need around 8 turns on average to research or build anything.

Normal difficulty. The AI is not even at half my fame points...

I really want to like and play this game to death but i can't ...

You are not the only one feeling the same thing. The game is actually totally unbalanced after medieval era. This is why 95% of the players stopped playing the game.

The only solution being to disable the turn limits in the victory condition. But that won't change the price to merge or build stuff.

Heads up that, unless latest patches changed things, bloated cost of merging cities mostly is caused by missing infrastructure, I had no issues with merging cities for 8-10 turns worth of influence income (Endless game speed) once the infrastructure matched.

But yeah, intended at least at some points, the science cost in contemporary era was specifically rebalanced that way because people brought up how easy it was to finish the game by completing the tech tree. The money (and pop) buyout costs bloated because it was easy to buy stuff (it still kinda is, if you trade a lot, because game pours a lot of cash through trade routes and gives little alternative for it).

That's odd, I tend to have the opposite result, in that I'm so far ahead of the AI in tech that it's silly.

My 2 guesses are:

1. Are you choosing to prioritize science with your civilians (especially in the ancient era this is insanely crucial), or keeping the default that wastes a lot of them on food?

2. Picking any science oriented cultures?

Nitroglycerine wrote:

That's odd, I tend to have the opposite result, in that I'm so far ahead of the AI in tech that it's silly.

My 2 guesses are:

1. Are you choosing to prioritize science with your civilians (especially in the ancient era this is insanely crucial), or keeping the default that wastes a lot of them on food?

2. Picking any science oriented cultures?

As i mentioned, i focused on science as much as possible. I only picked a non-science cultures once. The AI is way behind me in tech.

Sublustris wrote:
Instead of taking data-driven approach to balancing and see how most people objectively perform, they've listened to hardcore min-maxers that complained they got science victory on turn 130.

At first I thought, wow, a little bit harsh, but then... yeah, you hit the nail on the head. I had to lower difficulty level just because I wanted to play whatever culture I felt like and have a nice cruise instead of an unsatisfying race that I won anyway because competitors all tumbled down right at the finish line. I had to bring AI's incompetence up a notch just to not have to tryhard with cultures and be allowed to try to get Poland into space.

Sublustris wrote:

Nope, that's just how it is balanced, actually. Instead of taking data-driven approach to balancing and see how most people objectively perform, they've listened to hardcore min-maxers that complained they got science victory on turn 130. So unless you are playing in specific way to be super efficient, you'll always feel like playing from behind. Have fun now.

Yes! This!

Too much is balanced based on what a min-maxer could do to "break" the game. This is why tech costs are what they are. This is why pop- and money-build out costs are what they are. Same for influnce cost. This is why district costs are currently scaled the way they are. Everything is inflated in an attempt to prevent min-maxers from complaining snowballing. But the thing is, people will always be able to break the game. 

They should instead design it as they intended... a fun way to play. Ask, what is fun? What is challenging? (And to a lesser extent, what is realistic) Don't ask, how could someone cheese this? One example, Amplitude should ask, how many districts should a city have by what era? And then base costs on what are reasonable to achieve. For someone who focuses on science, you will be severely behind in district building because the costs scale so fast - to prevent builder min-maxers!

I'm not quite sure why the district scaling exists to be honest. The map feels so static and empty in the Contemporary era. Ancient cities were huge. They were razed, rebuilt and razed again over the eras. They went through drastic shifts in industry and focus. They had huge armies. In Humankind though we follow this trend of anemic cities in what I am sure is attempt at performance because the game struggles with districts filling out the map... but it is just too big of a compromise. 

Tragopan wrote:

I'm not quite sure why the district scaling exists to be honest. The map feels so static and empty in the Contemporary era. Ancient cities were huge. They were razed, rebuilt and razed again over the eras. They went through drastic shifts in industry and focus. They had huge armies. In Humankind though we follow this trend of anemic cities in what I am sure is attempt at performance because the game struggles with districts filling out the map... but it is just too big of a compromise. 

I've watched the AI fill up their entire territory sections with districts by the medieval era for.. some reason.

That being said, cities should only be so big in relation to the rest of the map. Making mega cities also kindof breaks the game once one comes under attack. I had some poor AI attack mine just for half of the units I own to get pulled into the battle.

District scaling makes you prioritize what to build in your cities. "Is this city going to make research quarters or markets?"

It allows new cities to quickly develop, while preventing big cities from going crazy with the FIMS.

They also increased the population food cost for the same reason, to limit the power of big cities.

Stability also limits how big a city can get, but this can be counteracted with commons and garrisons.

But due to the higher costs you can no longer do this as easily.

When the game launched I would have huge cities building a district every 1-2 turns.

Now it's more like every 5 turns for bigger cities.

The farthest I got in a standard game for my first time in tech (ON THE EASIEST DIFFICULTY) was the ironclad and Line infantry.

Ansive wrote:

District scaling makes you prioritize what to build in your cities. "Is this city going to make research quarters or markets?"

It allows new cities to quickly develop, while preventing big cities from going crazy with the FIMS.

They also increased the population food cost for the same reason, to limit the power of big cities.

That would be fine if it actually made sense to build research or market. As it stands, they only provide a bonus of 10-20, whereas food and production provide up to 20-50+ (and money isn't as good as production because buyout cost means 4 money = 1 production; so we get less of it even while having to pay more to use it) There's still no contest. The way it's currently scaled actually does the opposite of what you're saying. it makes it so you only make production because otherwise you can't get anything else done. Personally, I don't build districts all the time, which I why I said it was balanced around min-maxers who find it is the most optimal thing to do.

Going back to what I said earlier, basically, they're just pricing out players options instead of giving us meaningful choices. Game design should not be about reducing player choice to only one viable option.

I’m so glad I found this thread I thought I was losing my mind after the patch. I just don’t understand why they nerfed cultures, made research cost scale exponentially after medieval, and made district cost scale all at the same time. I get that before it was an issue that you could finish late game techs in 1 or 2 turns, but I like being able to finish late game techs relatively fast so I can build and enjoy some of the units. But now to even get a reasonable amount of turns for late game techs (6-7 turns) I have to go science cultures for the last 3 eras and even then I have to spend most of the last era with at least half my cities on collective minds which puts me behind in industry and money making building enough late game units to actually use them virtually impossible. Overall, it seems like you guys hit it right on the head. The patch wants you to play like hardcore min-maxers, ignoring mechanics like money and influence in favor of abusing mechanics like land raiser and collective minds, and it’s not fun to play like that. Guess I’ll just have to wait until the next patch

Sublustris wrote:

Nope, that's just how it is balanced, actually. Instead of taking data-driven approach to balancing and see how most people objectively perform, they've listened to hardcore min-maxers that complained they got science victory on turn 130. So unless you are playing in specific way to be super efficient, you'll always feel like playing from behind. Have fun now.

Teehee, I mean it literally is just "max out indy/coins with chosen OP cultures and switch to french and end game in couple turns".
If french are out you can also skip rush to contemporary and grab best of two for you.

I would welcome if there was something else to do, but there mostly isn't.
Sorry.

For some reason, even if balancing to please min maxers, there really close to almost a clear path to do one thing and there are few alternatives still.

I rarely min-maxed anything, I always played on humankind difficulty, i often chose random cultures for roleplaying; built an assortment of districts and most buildings in each city; but i did cluster like districts to get bonuses; but i also never switched my cities from the default population placement (i never readjusted pops from the default even though I've read that's non-optimal). From start to mid game it was a fun challenge especially if you're at war, but by mid game i steam rolled all the AI and every time easily won (the AI often self-destructing). By late game, techs came way to fast, districts were far to easy to build, and every city had every building. My point is the game needed rebalancing and not just for min-maxers, but also for lazy people who didn't do much of that but still found the game far to easy. I stopped playing because it got to easy and boring and I'm waiting for a profound patch to rebalance everything.

Yeah, playing through again and the game definitely seems horribly balanced. They really need to set things up for "average" or "non-focused" play. So that those who DON'T min-max their game to death and turn it into just a spreadsheet can actually accomplish things.

Also even on "Endless" you only get 600 turns. That's pathetic. Endless should be more like 3000 turns or so.

The base 300 should be for "blitz" games. 1000 turns seems like it's more appropriate for a "normal" length.

AdamTaylor wrote:

Yeah, playing through again and the game definitely seems horribly balanced. They really need to set things up for "average" or "non-focused" play. So that those who DON'T min-max their game to death and turn it into just a spreadsheet can actually accomplish things.

Also even on "Endless" you only get 600 turns. That's pathetic. Endless should be more like 3000 turns or so.

The base 300 should be for "blitz" games. 1000 turns seems like it's more appropriate for a "normal" length.

You could turn off the turn limit, if you prefer to play without that factor.