Hey all!

One of the most common points players raised in our previous OpenDev events was that they felt the game was simply too fast. We've been working a lot on this, but we're still not quite there et, so we need more feedback from you.

How do you feel about the pace of the game? Is the overall pace enjoyable? Does any aspect move faster or slower than the others? Do you always have interesting decisions to make, or are there periods when you just skip turns?

How do feel about the economy in the game? Are the decisions you make interesting? Are the different basic resources all valuable? Are they easy or difficult to get, compared to how useful they are?

Please let us know what you think in this thread!

I didn't play in the previous OpenDev events so can't comment relative to those, but I have gotten through a couple games for this event.

I had some time to think about it - at first it felt like production was too fast, but thinking about it now I think what is going to fast are the eras. It is just too easy to get stars and plow through the different ages (aside from neolithic). All these different periods of human history just feel like a blip on the radar.

Luxury resources are... fine. They feel like a nice bonus if you can get them, but honestly I've found the resources more useful for being able to build districts away from my city if I need to grab some food/production tiles. Strategics feel more impactful, particularly once you start needing more than 1 for units. I've definitely gotten into conflicts to try to secure certain strategics. It could just be this map, but the distribution of resources was a little off to me. Resources were hyper-concentrated along the west and north of the continent. My very first game I was only able to get horses and nothing else despite having 5 cities (though I took the iron/copper resources in the southeast after a war). Having some resources concentrated in certain areas is good because it encourages conflict, giving one lucky player a whole bunch in their starting area and another player no resources or just one feels bad.

Playing a gold strategy also feels a little silly. The amount of gold you can generate is absolutely insane, reminds me of broken lords in Endless Legends, except you're not taxed gold for your pops. Obviously economic civilizations should feel distinct, but there is a huge advantage with the gold focus because you can produce as many things per turn as you want up to the amount of gold you have, whereas other civs relying on production can only produce a single thing at a time. This would normally be balanced by requiring the player to make strategic use of their gold, but my most recent game I had over 100k in the bank somewhere around turn 125 after purchasing almost all my infrastructure and production. I didn't really have to make decisions in my gold-focused game after turn 70 or so. I just purchased nearly everything as soon as it became available and spam purchased districts.

I'm pretty sure you can build more than 1 thing per turn, as I have done so in my recent game.

Sorry, I should clarify. Technically you can produce more than one thing per turn (I have yet to determine if this is only if there is some kind of production overflow), but realistically the production cost of units/districts/structures prevents you from doing that, and if you can do it, it is usually just one unit/building. Although gold purchase cost scales, realistically you are flush with so much gold you can buy everything. For example, I got 3 stars for number of districts on the first turn of pre-modern by purchasing districts, and after doing it I was still absolutely flush with gold. You would never be able to do that with production.

1. frankly game pace needs to be longer, as from a warmonger's perspective by the time i have wrapped up one war, the game was close to ending.
2. the amount to war score one can get is too limited in addition as not much can be accomplished making peace vs the amount of damage done, ps I might as well just completely wipe my opponent out at this point.
3. one can raze occupied settlements and outposts as well and establish their own which is a work around to claiming territory in the peace screen.
4. city adsorption costs are too high currently, paying at least six times the amount of influence needed to acquire a wonder is terrible, please reduce the amount needed to around perhaps around the hundred mark or so.
5. tech progression and game pace are another problem, as tech progression does not match or surpass game pace even with multiple districts and upgrades.

1. A few cultures are just too strong, e.g. Mughals. See figure below for the mind-blowing 27.6k of industry, achieved without much difficulty. The reason is that the unique building gives +1 worker slot, and each worker gives +2 industry, leading to an approximate x^2 curve.

2. Farmers are useless. Since cities only grow 0 or 1 pop per turn, having many farmers to get a greater surplus is useless. I get 1.6k of food surplus but still 1 pop growth per turn. A percentage cap (e.g. growth each turn is no more than 5% of existing pop) is more reasonable.

3. Same problem with building armies. Even when I have multiple spawn points, I am still only able to get one unit each turn each city (6 actually, forming a full army, but still not enough considering the industrial capacity).

4. I didn't encounter much problem with merging cities. Religion gives a fair amount of influence with Honor Kin tenet. However it seems to be giving too much...

5. Game pacing is a bit fast. I do not really have time to explore the other continents. On my continent, while I can now flush my enemies away in a few turns with overwhelming numbers, I can also expect the wars to be time-consuming if there's an equal opponent.

A bit additional comment on pop growth. The current 0 or 1 growth per turn limit, combined with the availability of food, is actually encouraging players to get multiple medium-sized city with secured 1 pop growth per turn and some production capacity, rather than merging them together to a giant city. The reason is that building army consumes pop, so multiple cities enable a faster growth of total military capacity.

With the limit on districts lifted, spamming districts can end up with absurdly high stats. In one game I had 27k production per turn in one city, everything is instant built. Starting from there, the game is done. It could the builder’s ability is too strong, but production from districts alone is already 10k. I think district limits have to be back in some form to prevent such exploding numbers.

I think the limit could be stability but is too easy have stability 100%. 

Maybe increase stability minus with every district exponencial?

Don't make stability the issue bc thats not reasonable imo. the game feels to fast simply because people want to be able to micro it down so they can build out every city at its fullest. wich is indeed kinda possibel but you see... Guys just double the research time on everything but keep production cost the same and you'll be gucci or may make the researchcost scale itself up so that more research doesn't translate 1:1 into research bc its just ridicilous if i can like finish 5 researchs in one turn ngl

I felt that at the beginning (neolithic and ancient eras) the pace was quite nice. However, during the classical era, I conquered a several cities and started snowballing very heavily. By the medieval era I was building basically everything in one turn (I was mainly building barays, which I think are very strong) and researching almost any tech in one turn.

I very easily got 50+ food in all my cities with no effort apart from choosing Harappans, so probably getting food should be made harder. I like that influence is relatively hard to get early in the game. I think industry snowballs too easily. I mostly ignored gold, so not sure about that. I liked stability in the early game, but after a point it became too easy to take care of it because of the huge industry output my cities had.

I would like to chime in with some of the prior comments, namely that I felt like I had purely by accident snowballed til I had no concerns for my resources. 

In terms of pace, one thing I have felt as I've retried the scenario is that the continent the player starts on fills up extremely fast. I am brushing against my neighbors and angering them with new outposts within 50 turns. I am inevitably angering my opponents once I've got around 4 or 5 areas claimed, and I've even had the purple, ostensibly peaceful, opponent declare war on me. I want to have more breathing room than is in this scenario before I have to start considering who I am upsetting. 

In subsequent playthroughs, I have felt a bit unsure of what to do, as I do not feel confident expanding without upsetting others and I am not always sure how to decide what my goals are. I have only completed one playthrough but in economic terms, by about halfway through I was not concerned about my economy, nor my science or influence.

The pace is generally way, WAY too fast and it's far too easy to snowball, and I can second all of the comments in this thread. To break it down resource by resource:

- Food becomes an afterthought past the very early game (outside of risky expands into production heavy territory). You can very quickly get into Abundant food growth and grow one citizen a turn. Farms districts alone are insanely overpowered and a good farm district on a river can net an easy +12 food even in late Ancient, which makes food production irrelevant. Major cities never have any issue with food due to just how much natural food you can generate with one grass river province.

- Population quickly becomes an afterthought too. At first I felt a bit icky about rushing buildings with pop, but then I quickly realized that once my Production/Science slots were filled (and maybe Money), extra population was functionally worthless unless I needed to recruit an army. Farmer slots are basically 100 % worthless which is obviously hilariously ahistorical given that civilizations strugged with food for most of their history and get conscripted or sacrificed basically on command.

- Production can quickly spiral too assuming you are smart about your expands. Mountainside artisan districts can give you insane yields fast, and hamlets in the last game easily tack +10 on. And that's only "reasonable" yields as some people in this thread have demonstrated 10k+ production a turn (I reached 900-1k easily not trying too hard late game). Production pops are always useful especially past Classical when they start self-boosting

- Money is honestly a chore. Merchant Districts come in last and have extremely awkward adjacencies (made worse by the fact that Farmer Districts become worthless past 2-3). The lack of terrain yield is puzzling, especially given that science has terrain yields (no money on river ? That was a staple of EL, even Civ VI does it). Money is frankly irrelevant anyways since you can just produce everything you want and whip pops to build what you can't buyout. However, AIs seem to produce absurd amounts of money (a god strat in the Beta is early AI vassal since they seem to output 1k-2k gold a turn consistently). I noticed AI builds massive sprawling metropolises of money districts

- Science is simple. Every citizen you can spare goes into science slot, which inflates your science yield insanely quickly since natural yield is minimal for a while. Using this you can easily blast though the entire Ancient era as long as you are willing to sacrifice some early production (unless you have a god spot for production). Once infrastructure comes in science is an afterthought. I've built science districts but frankly it was mostly out of boredom/not knowing what to build, outside of the scientist slot I'm not confident if there is even a big point to them as +5/8 science is trivial past early game

- Influence is fine-ish ? It feels like it's properly budgeted early game but beyond that its production honestly becomes a bit unclear, just that I "have a lot" just for doing well and building all my infrastructure. As people as said the cost for linking cities is absurd, while the cost for colonization stays reasonable. Wonder claiming siphons excess influence aggressively.

One thing I'm afraid of is that the best strat is to just build everything everywhere. Spam production to produce more, and then back build everything else since it takes one turn anyways. I'm never really punished for it because I can spawn an entire professional army in all my major cities in 2-3 turns if attacked. Honestly it was a tug of war between science and production for which one was too fast

It definitely needs to be slowed way, WAY down. I'm not asking for like 100 turns an era (outside of Marathon like settings), but you can easily blow into the Early Modern Era with zero issues by turn 150, and if the tech tree wasn't capped I'm confident I would be well into Industrial and still exponentially buffing my empire by then. Resource numbers reach thousands a turn by turn 50-100 too, which clearly shows that resource "pips" are really not valuable

Also there is a big alert about exponential buffing. Cities that are already well-built keep getting exponentially buffed by every new improvement, which turns into a win-more snowball really quickly. A flat nerf alone might not be enough to limit the issue, it's probably the citizen worker versus tile exploitation balance needs to be checked

I will also say that Hamlets make resource districts irrelevant by mid-game since they exploit everything always. While you still need to spam resource districts for worker slots, they will give you crazy amount of yields. Which, come to think of it, might also contribute to the base issue with territories. Usually the exponential curve starts when you attach an outpost and its corresponding exploited tiles, which means you get double the town center yields for the same population. The stability cost can be crippling early but is easily negated by wonder and monument spamming. Once you start building wonders, stability becomes an afterthought

After playing a few more games I think outpost costs need to be increased. Almost every territory seems to be claimed by the end of the ancient, which really reduces the value of expansionist civs in the classical era and beyond (though I think it is reasonable most or all are claimed by the end of the classical).

I have been trying to think about whether the size of the map in the scenario is a factor. Is it relatively small? If this would be the rough size of a standard continent in a regular game, it would definitely feel too constrained. I wonder if it's the outpost cost being so low, or if it's the area each outpost/city claims (is this called a territory?) being too big relative to the continent size, or if the continent just needs to be bigger for a standard game.

I agree on Outposts being too cheap (and quick!) to build. If you place it on a good production hex that outpost can be up and running in 1-2 turns sometimes.

In history fighting over territory was pretty common, I think the early game could be improved by making these territory fights a more prominant aspect. Make outposts take a little while to build, so that the player, or the AI can try to prevent it from being built and then place their own down instead.

I'd also like to see the option to ransack existing outposts without the need to declare war, maybe as long as a non-agression pact hasnt been signed then its fair game? It would require outposts to be protected and early territory could change hands frequently. 

Another item I noticed during my game today: there needs to be an alert when a city is queued to construct a district but stability has fallen below the threshold that would allow you to construct it. I typically don't have more than 1 or 2 items queued at any given time and rely on the alerts to tell me when I need to look at the city's production again. The result is that you can end up wasting quite a few turns in your city doing absolutely nothing.

The fastest part of the game right now feels like population growth to me. It's wild to me that I can have a city at 90 pop 949 food and a city at 88 pop 1176 food by turn 141. Of course it's also impacted by just how many districts I built up to as well. 74 in the first city and 73 in the second. We're simply able to produce too much food and industry way too fast.

The slowest resource to grow really feels like money at the moment. I haven't tried a money focused playthrough yet or played multiple merchant factions back to back, but the money Era stars are really hard to accomplish. I've only managed 2 across 2 whole playthroughs now.

Another thing about game pace that feels odd is getting the ability to travel the oceans. The ocean to the west is so wide the fastest route I found to crossing it is Norsemen Langskips, and even then I didn't really get it up and running until about turn 80. Of course, in the full game if the turn count goes to about 300 or so and the rate at which we progress eras slows down, since it's quite fast being able to hit the classical easily by turn 40 or earlier, that will feel a lot better.

Game is going too fast.In the ancient era I built only two unique districts,because I didn't have enough time to built more.Unique unit I built only in the next era.