[request] please move the hard cap for city resources in XML.

I support this suggestion. Moving this value to the XML would open a lot of possibilities. It could be placed in the map type, so more "barren" map types would have a lower value and "fertile" map types would have it higher.

I have to agree on this one as well.

Me too! Please me the cap XML-based so we can lower or raise it at our discretion!

Gotta say I support this idea too...

Can't it just be some sort of rarity thing?

Another way to implement this would be for the maximum total for any tile to be an option set at the beginning of the game.   9 would be the default maximum but you would be able to choose numbers from say 5 to 13.    That would allow everyone to pick how they want this game mechanic to work.

Yep.  Putting it in the map generation screen would work too.  I would like to see a "no limit" option though.  

Agree

Yeah, I'll think about it.  It's a good point.

But, just so you see where I am coming from, these are the reasons I like yield limits:

1. It presents a decision.  With it you will see a scattering of yields that have various pros and cons.  Without that you will see a single tile that is significantly better than all the ones around it.  So there is no decision to make, you want to put it there.  This is the reaosn we cut all the tiles that have less than 6 in total yields.  95% of the time you should put a city there, so it wasn't a real decision, it was a noob trap (ie: a game mechanic offered as a strategic decision but informed players realize there is only one real choice).

2. Controlled pacing.  We balance the game for a wide range of starting positions and options, random world creation makes this tough.  But the wider the range of tile yields, the harder this task is.  At the low end of the starting range players feel like the game is to slow, at the high end it is to fast.  This isn't dependent on any choice the player made, but on the luck of the draw for the yields they had available.

3. Balance.  The wider the range the harder it is to balance against AI players.  In some cases the game is already over from the time you settle your first city.  If oyu are playign against an AI and you get a 3/3/3 city and he gets a 2/2/2 city then he is in trouble (and thats the extremes of our current bounds, opening it up makes it even worse).  This problem gets to be even harder when human player Ctrl+N to get good starting locations.  So they always get on of those prime yields and the AI is left with the luck of the draw.  The more variation, the worse it becomes.

4. Why do you want more yields?  Is it because you want the game to go faster?  If so you have production and research pace sliders to adjust your game.  And the nice things about those is that they are global, the AI gets to use them too so it stays balanced.  Is it because more is better?  In which case I would ask why raising it to 10 or 11 is any better.  Wouldn't you just want 12 or 13?  What is the magic number?

The last thing I'd say, and it's to your point (and the reason I suspect you want larger yields) is that its just cool to come across that rare instance of a location with significantly higher yields, just the excitement and desire to get a super city there.  I like that idea, and I want those moments too.  It just needs to be balanced with the above.

So maybe we allow them in rare occasions, but they can't be by starting locations (that's really where the balance issues go crazy) so you always have to explore to find them.  Maybe they only appear by really strong monsters lairs (or are on those tiles).  We need a solution that allows us to keep our awesome tiles, but doesn't throw decision making, pacing and balance out the window.

How about if you can only violate the 9 yield rule in wildlands?

I agree with Derek's reason and I think the uber tiles should be in some Wildlands and by dragon lairs (or other uber mob)

You can already have a city with higher than norm yields just by having clay quarries and farms/orchards being harvested by a city.  Essence should be a rare resource, and having too much essence thrown around the map diminishes the value of capturing shards and upgrading temples for mana.

Yes, the "super tiles" would not be intended for starting positions, but for wildlands. This gives an additional reason for clearing wildlands as a couple of days ago another poster complained that wildlands needed more incentives to clear them.

Derek,

There are a number of city enchantments that scale according to the essence present.  Basically, I will tend to place cities of a specific type only where I can find a good essence yield, instead of trying some other strategy that doesn't depend on essence.  The reason for this is usually down to the selection of city enchantments available.

If you added some more city enchantments that do not depend on essence quantity (just on its existence) then it helps both the player and the AI to make the most of city locations that are perhaps not as ideal as they would like, rather than exploring half the map at the start of the game hunting for such a place, then giving up and Ctrl+N'ing out of what could have been a really good and challenging game.

I mean okay, I could basically mod this in myself anyway, the point is that's why players are so insistent about having high essence yields, it's because you can slot (for example) four unit enchantments and they're all +4 each.  All your troops from that city will be so much better than ones which are from the high material city that doesn't have any essence, even though those ones can be cranked out like tins of baked beans in a Heinz factory.

I really like your point Derek.   And yes, exactly what you said is the point I've been trying to convey.   I miss finding that uber spot.  It's like finding a really awesome weapon.  It completely alters the game progress, and you're excited about it.   That *was* the best part about stamps.  I cleared them just to build cities.  <edit to make shorter>

I see four potential solutions that could work individually or in conjunction. Here they are in the order of coolness (in my opinion)

1.  add ability to flag a tile as contributes to a cities resources after the cap is applied.  So when You are making a stamp, you can flag that cool 3x fire node as "contributes after cap applied."  This could also allow modders to bypass the cap by flagging all tiles as "contributes after cap" if they really wanted that in their mod. ( wouldn't, I'd use it exactly as I just said )

2.  Allow it to be modded.   Particularly if we could alter said xml during gameplay, so we could add uber spells that would raise the cap dynamically.  Of course, this would require some way of seeing what the tile would be if the cap were not present.  Then we could use advanced spells and technology in our mods to tap into these difficult to utilize resources.  

3.  An adjustable cap implemented during map creation.   Leave 9 as the default, and let it adjust from 6 to 12 / no cap.   I do not dislike this solution.  

4.  Create a field around your starting position that creates the cap only for those fields.   This sounds like the most complex solution, and the least fun.   

 

Lastly, breaking game balance with a mod isn't hard.  just make a 1 production cost building that yields 10000 production.  yay. I win.  Or alter my soverign in his xml to make him level 80.  Yay. i win again.   But there are so many cool things I could DO with this ability in a mod, it would be fun for all.

I really like the hardcap in the game.

If it's to be changable, please just make it moddable, while leaving the default hardcap at 9.

Thanks

Yeah I like the hardcap, I think the yields are pretty good now.  Having said that the occasional "special" tile in the wildlands or in a hard to get to location would be cool.

Great post from Kael - good to see a detailed explanation on the reasoning that has gone into it.

+1 to wildland tiles having more than 9 points of resources.

Derek, with respect to your reasons why you like Yield Limits:

1. I want to make a decision based on choices, not limitations. If you want me to have a choice, force me to make that choice on factors such as up-front value versus later value (production and mana are great up front, but gold takes while to accumulate). If I see a spot with 4/4/3, let met have its fullest benefits. It is no fun seeing it and expecting to have it, then learning you can't have it.

2. Spells and other effects can increase from 5/3/3 for instance and part of the value within the choice is how to develop your choice later and not just when you settle it. When I want to specialize a city in a certain way, I shouldn't have to "remember not to increase any value about X" and factor every several turns; this burdensome micromanagement is not fun. Also, mods that increase yields by changing values or through a spell become worthless unless the 9 cap is removed.

3. Controlled Pacing: As the game moves on, my ability to improve a city beyond 9 will happen. Part of the choice is that I can "go tall" by having 3-4 cities with 12 or 15 instead of 10 cities with 9.  This is far more fun, gives me a new spectrum of choice (tall vs wide, rather than forcing tall) and gives more value to the conclave/city/fortress decision. This decision gains value because with a max 9, I have the same choice every time, while if I had a town with 12, I would have to think "this would be a great fortress, but... it could also be the "best" city ever."

4. Why do we want more yields? Because some maps might "require" 5 cities with 3/2/0 as being the only options with maybe a 4/1/1. Seeing the 5/3/3 tile I saw once was in the middle of 2 other spots: a 4/1/1 and a 3/3/1 or ONE 5/3/3.  This presented me a perplexing decision that, instead of making me choose between 2 bad things, or 2 good things, would have made me choose how to play that current game. Tall or Wide.

That said, the player who knows how to change numbers in XML does so because they want a different experience; making this feature in the XML puts your idea onto the field but lets the player change it if they want to.

To answer your question about motive: I want to play a "Tall Empire" with a diplomatically peaceful game with other empires, fighting through the wildlands and doing quests until I feel my Tall Empire is ready to "Pull a Ghandi".

Still getting used to LH, great work.

I agree, let it be modded.

My biggest thrill is finding a great tile; and personally I prefer essence over everything else. But since tiles became capped I very rarely see a capped tile with 3 essence, even if it should have it. 4 essence tiles are practically impossible to find now. I just found the first one I've seen since 1.3 and I must have played 10 full games since then. And yet because of the cap, it is still kinda of a mediocre find because based on its location (almost a perfect location really) I would have expected 3/4/4 or 4/4/4 in the past before 1.3, now it is a 2/3/4.

Derek, while I appreciate all of your points, and agree with many of them, I still feel that making the cap an XML variable would give the dedicated, mod-prone player an extra choice while not invalidating the balance of the normal game.

After all, as someone has already mentioned, modding the XML already provides several ways to break the balance, or to "cheat" over the AI, or to circumvent meaningful choices for the player - see for example the XML defined sovereign customization points, which can be raised in order to give the player an unfair advantage...

An XML-based tile cap would have a very similar functionality, no? It would make the standard game balanced and fair, but give modders a chance to play around with it if they felt it would serve their purpose...

Having said that, I do like the idea of special, "very high yield" tiles that are found as parts of quests or in the wildlands as a special reward

This is why you added clay, wheat, orchards, etc etc in the first place.  They 'super boost' a city beyond the 9 default. 

Maybe you need to add another material boosting feature (landing next to forests isn't always best), and maybe Shards or something else can give a boost to essence (maybe the top level temple?  then reduce the mana output).  Rare occurrences of course.

I like the map driven yield style (is there a farm next to that 2/5 spot?  then it's better than the 3/3 location) much more than searching for an uber spot.

Though, making the yield numbers accessible to xml or dbase manipulation does make sense and shouldn't be too hard.  You could satisfy the modder crowd without having to pay attention to balance issues as the default is still what you set it as.

Placing an Uber-City should have the opportunity cost of NOT placing 2 "good but not uber" cities.

I recently saw a game with a 5/3/2 and 3 spaces north AND south were a 4/1/1 and a 3/2/1. I chose the uber city because I prefer a style that uses less, but bigger cities, known in Civ5 as "Tall Empire".

Also, the number of unusable tiles, and the desert tiles and the city distance limits...  there is enough in store already to create a choice regarding the UBER city.

And yes, knowing one is clearly better does remove the element of a choice, but what makes me still choose is that there is NOT one good spot, and one bad spot.

Instead, there is one great spot, OR a few good spots. The only "way to go wrong" then, is having one good spot OR one bad spot, in which case fault lie not in the good spot, for being too god, but in all the spots around it for not having at least 2 other good spots to force the 1 great vs 2 good choice.  Otherwise, if my choice is between 2 bad spots, I won't have a good one in the end.

Of course, I am not arguing because i want a change in the base-game, I am arguing because I make core edits and this is one of those things I want to change. Believe it or not, LH was the first update I have done since 1.2 because I got sick of re-making all my core edits over and over and over and over...

Love the idea of these "uber spots" being in the wildlands, or even say within a tile of a dragon or something else on the higher end of the monster scale.

First post, but this is really obnoxious. Please let this be moddable, it is a SINGLE player game, why force us to accept a hard cap???

I think having over-9-capped cities in wildlands is a GREAT idea!!! It would make the wildlands worthwhile to conquer, and (IMO) be okay with balancing issues.

I think the solution that would appease everyone the best, would be the ability to flag a tile as contributing to resources after the cap calculation.  Then the wild lands could easily be made to exceed the cap, and modders could alter other tiles as they saw fit.  Everybody wins.