Settlement Cap

[Aluminum Elite Master]

I get that they wanted to stop ICS (infinite city sprawl). ICS was out of control in Civ 6, where there often could be ample land to settle and little downside to settling it.

But the way to create a settlement cap isn't setting an arbitrary limit... make the AI actually fight the player more competently for the land.

Civ, as a series, has grappled with ICS pretty much its entire history. Civ 6 mostly opened the floodgates to ICS; Civ 5 lowered science and culture slightly with each settled city; almost all games in the series have luxuries/amenities in some form; some games in the series having housing or sanitation. Rebellions, yield reductions, and more have also occurred along the way.

But what the series needs is just better AI player programming. That would be your actual 'settlement cap', in that the risk of overextending would be much larger. . Overextending your empire in this series has usually been more a problem of reducing happiness and yield, not having a war that implodes your whole civilization.

Unless I forward settle every possible time against a Deity AI opponent, I'm usually able to hold what I settle... and that's a problem. The AI shouldn't need deep bonuses just to play hexagonal checkers: it may very well need said bonuses to compete culturally or scientifically, but knowing to contest settle-able neutral land feels like not a big request to make given that it's a turn-based game.

So, long rant aside, here's the main idea:

The settlement cap shouldn't exist. Keep amenities, luxuries, housing, stuff like that. But some arbitrary number is a bad idea, and if you *really* want to limit players, get the AI to a place where it knows to keep forces available to hem me in, even on Prince. Just on a 'normal' difficulty, the AI needs to be a bit more active in limiting expansion.

[Bullpup]

Where are you getting the info about a settlement cap? Doesn't sound like a fun idea. Would be better if the cities far away required a lot of work or else they'd declare independence a-la USA and England.

[Oaks]

The settlement cap seems to play directly into the military victory path for each age. You need to hold a certain number of settlements, but you likely won't be able to have enough with the settlement cap. However, conquered settlements count extra (and later religious or ideologically different conquered land.)

The point is, the settlement cap ensures that to get the military legacy path for each age, you need to conquer because you probably won't be able to reach the goal with your own settlement, which I think is pretty neat.

Since Civ 3, I've never been really into having huge amounts of cities, so I am of course a little biased.

In the modern age Livestream, they had a settlement cap of I think 22. Isn't that a pretty good amount? Would you really want to manage more than 22 cities? Asking out of interest.

[Bullpup]

Originally posted by Oaks:

In the modern age Livestream, they had a settlement cap of I think 22. Isn't that a pretty good amount? Would you really want to manage more than 22 cities? Asking out of interest.

It's not about whether we want more than x, it's about the idea that we're limited by an artificial x at all. And about the "realism" or in-game rationale for that limit.

If there is habitable land for a city and in real life someone would build on that land, the game needs to give a good reason for stopping you especially if in the prior iterations there were more subtle and hidden mechanics to achieve that, like happiness.

[plaguepenguin]

Point me to a game that is even a fraction of the complexity of the civ series, and is as open-ended as the civ series, and manages to make the AI competitive without giving it bonuses. I would like to play that game, so please.

"AI" has become a marketing term. A program can be intelligent in the technical sense, that it can give instructions detailing different responses that are adaptive to different conditions. Bacteria are intelligent by that technical definition. When we hear the word "intelligent" though, we expect actual intelligence as we see it displayed by fellow humans all the time. Could you write a program for yourself and your fellow humans that would make them behave with more intelligence, behavior that was more adaptive to the full range of conditions humans have to respond to?

Set yourself a much easier task. Write this program for the much simpler task of playing this game. If you have ever played and won any civ game, write out the explanation for every one of the decisions you made during that game that led you to win rather than lose. If this set of instructions is indeed flexible enough to do well in the game, if it can break down any given game-state into the elements that matter towards victory, then has a response that will lead to a more adaptive game-state for you, then you will have written a program intelligent enough to give you a challenge, without bonuses.

What we have now instead of that is "AI". It can probably think better than the average bacteria, but is closer in intelligence to them than it is to humans. You have to give the AI a handicap if you want it to give you a competitive game, the same as you give a human who is worse than you at golf a handicap if you want a competitive game of golf.

Not that even an AI that was actually intelligent would fill the need for the settlement cap that the devs put it in the game to fill. It's there to help keep humans and programs from snowballing. However actually intelligent the AI, and the human it is playing against, some player or another is going to have an advantage in starting position that will let them get a little ahead. Being a little ahead is golden, especially early in the game when no player has a lot of power and freedom of action, because you start pretty close to zero and have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Being even a little ahead makes you more capable than the competition of getting even further ahead, and quickly one player is so far ahead that they couldn't lose the game if they tried. At that point, it's no longer a strategy game, because decisions no longer count, not those of the winner or those of the losers.

I don't play 6 in MP, but I did look a bit into how they play the game to see if I could get some strategy tips from the folks who, after all, have a lot of experience playing against beings with actual intelligence, fellow humans. I did get some nice tips, but I was struck most of all by the great care taken by the league I looked at to modify the game in such a way as to make early conquest impossible. They used a balanced start mod, and gave every civ more room from its neighbors, and played at online speed. Then they nerfed civs that have an advantage at early conquest even further. Well, they value not having someone run away with the game in the first 50 turns. In comparison to all the measures these people take, a settlement cap is a simple and elegant mechanic to help keep any player from running away with the game almost before it starts.

That's why 7 has a settlement cap, to try to slow down conquest. For all the design features the game has to allow and encourage tall play, there is still such an inherent advantage to playing wide that the strategy of grabbing more land needs further clogs on it to keep it from becoming a dominant strategy, something you always do in every game without the need for thought because it always works better than anything else.

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

Point me to a game that is even a fraction of the complexity of the civ series, and is as open-ended as the civ series, and manages to make the AI competitive without giving it bonuses. I would like to play that game, so please.

Oh, let me introduce you to AI War 2: a game that has absolutely amazing, cunning AI by virtue of carefully balancing the game so that it plays to an AI's strengths, then handicaps it by hardcapping the number of units it can deploy against the player. The catch is, the more you "upset" the AI (measured as "AI Progress"), the more its safeguards are taken off.

Therefore, the challenge as the player is to conquer enough territory to build up a big enough army to strike the AI homeworld, while not taking SO much that the AI decides you're worthy of its attention and squashes you with hundreds of fleets and perfect micro.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/573410/AI_War_2/

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Oaks:

The settlement cap seems to play directly into the military victory path for each age. You need to hold a certain number of settlements, but you likely won't be able to have enough with the settlement cap. However, conquered settlements count extra (and later religious or ideologically different conquered land.)

The point is, the settlement cap ensures that to get the military legacy path for each age, you need to conquer because you probably won't be able to reach the goal with your own settlement, which I think is pretty neat.

Since Civ 3, I've never been really into having huge amounts of cities, so I am of course a little biased.

In the modern age Livestream, they had a settlement cap of I think 22. Isn't that a pretty good amount? Would you really want to manage more than 22 cities? Asking out of interest.

This is where I wasn't sure if the mechanic was fully explained or not, yet.

From the military legacy perspective, the cap makes sense. That's fine by me *for that one particular area*.

But other info in their news blurbs indicates the cap does reduce yields and so forth when exceeded. Directly states this in at least one blurb that was all about the cap. And that's where I am getting concerned, because it's fine to ask a player to take X number of cities for a legacy boost or what have you... what is less impressive is having the cap lower yields when exceeded.

And for reference, in a game of Civ VI, conquering just a *standard* size map in the end game usually could mean having upwards of 30 cities, so 22 is not a high cap in the modern age (which is late game). Even intentionally sniping capitals, I often would still get to 25 or 30 cities as some cities have to be taken along the way (for loyalty pressure, or just to have a route to the capital).

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

Point me to a game that is even a fraction of the complexity of the civ series, and is as open-ended as the civ series, and manages to make the AI competitive without giving it bonuses. I would like to play that game, so please.

"AI" has become a marketing term. A program can be intelligent in the technical sense, that it can give instructions detailing different responses that are adaptive to different conditions.

For this particular issue, we can call it AI, or call it CPU players, or call it program coding, but what we call it feels irrelevant to me.

Whatever it is called, the CPU's war/military play is deficient on a basic, tactical level, and there ARE games that get it right. Especially within turn-based gaming... it's hard to stomach watching Civ 6 lob fighters at land units when I have had jet-bombers out wreacking havoc the last 40 turns already. Civ 4 was better and that was in the same series.

It's harder for me to excuse bad tactics when it's turn-based. Total War CPU play is shambolic tactically but is at least in real-time and probably a lot harder to improve in some ways, though even there, modders found ways to make the AI/CPU much better.

But in terms of a settlement cap, the issue wouldn't exist if the game had CPU opponents who recognized basic military usage or at least reacted to some crucial stuff like when I have 12 apostles moving in to totally convert them, or when I have a lot of open land between them and I. I've always been cool with a bit longer turn-end times if the game at least programs CPU opponents to react to major actions like that.

[plaguepenguin]

Originally posted by Dark Sun Gwyndolin:

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

Point me to a game that is even a fraction of the complexity of the civ series, and is as open-ended as the civ series, and manages to make the AI competitive without giving it bonuses. I would like to play that game, so please.

Oh, let me introduce you to AI War 2: a game that has absolutely amazing, cunning AI by virtue of carefully balancing the game so that it plays to an AI's strengths, then handicaps it by hardcapping the number of units it can deploy against the player. The catch is, the more you "upset" the AI (measured as "AI Progress"), the more its safeguards are taken off.

Therefore, the challenge as the player is to conquer enough territory to build up a big enough army to strike the AI homeworld, while not taking SO much that the AI decides you're worthy of its attention and squashes you with hundreds of fleets and perfect micro.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/573410/AI_War_2/

I will give it a try. I won't prejudge until I play it, but it seems on the face of it to be a lot less open-ended than any Civ game.

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

Originally posted by Dark Sun Gwyndolin:

Oh, let me introduce you to AI War 2: a game that has absolutely amazing, cunning AI by virtue of carefully balancing the game so that it plays to an AI's strengths, then handicaps it by hardcapping the number of units it can deploy against the player. The catch is, the more you "upset" the AI (measured as "AI Progress"), the more its safeguards are taken off.

Therefore, the challenge as the player is to conquer enough territory to build up a big enough army to strike the AI homeworld, while not taking SO much that the AI decides you're worthy of its attention and squashes you with hundreds of fleets and perfect micro.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/573410/AI_War_2/

I will give it a try. I won't prejudge until I play it, but it seems on the face of it to be a lot less open-ended than any Civ game.

If your concern is "open-ended", don't worry. You're required to have at least one Human faction and at least one AI faction, but beyond that, anything goes. You can face down a half-dozen AI's in a mutual civil war while you pick at the edges, or spawn a bunch of neutral factions like the Nanocaust and the Devourer Golem that are hostile to both sides. You can even recruit player-or-NPC-controlled "Sidekicks" to aid you in various ways, such as the Necromancer or the modded Civilian Industries. Same for the AI, such as the resource-delivering Astrotrain or the Scourge, composed of units taken from Arcen's previous game The Last Federation. Oh, and mods are officially built into the game complete with direct developer support for the most popular mods.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Bullpup:

Originally posted by Oaks:

In the modern age Livestream, they had a settlement cap of I think 22. Isn't that a pretty good amount? Would you really want to manage more than 22 cities? Asking out of interest.

It's not about whether we want more than x, it's about the idea that we're limited by an artificial x at all. And about the "realism" or in-game rationale for that limit.

If there is habitable land for a city and in real life someone would build on that land, the game needs to give a good reason for stopping you especially if in the prior iterations there were more subtle and hidden mechanics to achieve that, like happiness.

And to go back, the point is indeed that it's immersion-breaking to say that > X number of cities = Y -% for food, etc.

Give me something within the game world itself that restricts ICS. Amenities and housing do kind of work this way in Civ 6, though tying starting amenities to difficulty level is where it goes off the rails (higher difficulty punishes a bit too much).

Settlement cap is kind of a crucial issue for me mostly because it disincentivizes expanding when you otherwise have the ability to. In Humankind, this same problem occurred, where open land sits because despite me making good decisions, there's just no way to lift the city cap until some specific tech or X amount of mana in this or that category. I have plenty of luxuries, gold, whatever, but am sitting waiting on something arbitrary like that.

Civ VII may be a good game... I may even pre-order in the next few days. Who knows. But the series needs to really examine *why* it needs some of the solutions it does to certain problems, because the underlying cause is often something that could be addressed in a more creative way.

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Aluminum Elite Master:

The settlement cap shouldn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

It's a soft cap which can be greatly exceeded, controlled through happiness, but is kept in check when the Age ends. Which is how they prevent runaway Civs.

Watch Inquisitive Otter's video on Deity.

He had control of 11 towns and cities with a cap of 5 as he neared the end of the Antiquity Age.

That changed to 11/7 when Age Progression reached 100%.

And became 9/9 at the start of the Exploration Age.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huh0z0C8x6c