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A criticism of Collective Mind

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3 years ago
Sep 15, 2021, 7:15:38 PM

For me and some other players, Collective Mind is a feature that is far too powerful. Here's why: it turns all your industry and gold production into scientific production.


Typically, a civilization builds a powerful industry in the classical era. Then in the Middle Ages, you take a scientific civ, like the Umayyads.


The result is that you can convert without any loss, your powerful industry, into a powerful scientific production. For 5 turns and as much as you want.


All this industrial power, which was useful to produce districts and units, will produce a huge production of science, without any effort: no need for a scientific district, for a scientific building. No. Just maximize the industry.


When you reach the next era, you will have access to powerful units, like mortars. You will be able to produce them immediately, because you just have to deactivate your science mode, to switch back to your industrial production.


This is the power of Collective Mind. It is extreme. If Collective Mind is almost useless in the ancient era (for the Babylonians), this power becomes extremely efficient later on.



This power is a game changer, much more significant than any other power. It despecializes the cities. A civilization that is backward in science but strong in industry has no problem catching up. This is not normal. It somehow has all the advantages (industry & science), without the disadvantages (weak industry or weak science).


I don't know what to do to nerf this power. But this power should convert only 50 % of the industrial production in my opinion. That would be already,efficient and usefull.

Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Sep 16, 2021, 7:11:54 AM

Yes, this feature is broken and should be fixed. It is not normal to grow your science from 200 to 1000 without any effort.

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3 years ago
Sep 16, 2021, 6:11:36 PM

I've been very outspoken about how much of a problem for the game Collective Minds is and how it needs to be changed. Land Raiser is similarly problematic and also needs an overhaul.


I don't think military timings are anywhere near as much of a problem as some of the other uses of Collective Minds, either, because you still need a lot of industry to build later units (or money to upgrade). As an example of where it really starts to get broken, Umayyads can use it to rush Settlers and Luxury Manufactories and hit both much, much, much faster. Then, in the Contemporary Era, you can use it on Swedes or Japanese to hit all endgame techs and rapidly out-fame anyone else while simultaneously ending the game. I haven't actually finished a game with the Umayyads strat myself (I did something similar with Joseon, which is a bit slower) but I saw a player on Reddit say he won the game in the mid 70s (yes, he had a screenshot as proof) through a tech victory by combining these two strategies. It's absurdly broken.


(Quick related note - if any devs end up reading this, the problem is made even worse by the fact that Luxury Manufactories are currently broken and work with purchased luxuries, making them even more ridiculously overpowered than they already are. Please please please fix this.)


My proposed solution would quite simply be to make them function the same way other affinity abilities do. One city, 5 turns, and a 10 turn cooldown begins when you activate it. It would honestly still be powerful even then, but it definitely wouldn't be broken in the way it is now.

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3 years ago
Sep 16, 2021, 6:30:43 PM

Something else that ties into this - the higher requirements for Science era stars that Scientists get is clearly designed to balance out Collective Minds, but it doesn't really have this effect in practice. The problem is that some Scientists don't benefit from CM all that much (eg Babylonians, as Jojo pointed out) and the result is that the Scientist stars nerf really hurts them. Babylonians would probably be a reasonable ancient era pick if it wasn't for this, but with the hit to Scientist era stars they are instead, unfortunately, pretty terrible.


My suggestion is to both change the way Collective Minds works and remove the era stars penalty.

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3 years ago
Sep 18, 2021, 5:18:09 AM

Yes, either change how it works or nerf it. It would still be a very strong ability at 30% effectiveness. 


All science civs are absolutely broken right now however, making all other strategies far inferior to just massing production and then being a science culture.


Problem is also that production can be used for everything else and it dumbs down the game incredibly much.

Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Sep 18, 2021, 6:09:55 AM

The player Brubie proposed this very good idea to nerf Collective Mind. I write it here:

"Another idea could be to make the civilian slots work as researchers or something.

(Instead of making all industry exploitation into sciencce)".


Collective mind would not convert, but could triple the scientist slots of a city

Allowing producing lot of science but as the price of reducing your industry or gold. Which is fine.
It would be situationnaly good if you need a push in science.

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3 years ago
Sep 18, 2021, 12:02:31 PM

Just chiming in to say I agree that Collective Minds and Landraiser are some of the most overpowered things in the game right now. Especially considering how weak the Expansionist ability is. 

danza4x wrote:
My proposed solution would quite simply be to make them function the same way other affinity abilities do. One city, 5 turns, and a 10 turn cooldown begins when you activate it. It would honestly still be powerful even then, but it definitely wouldn't be broken in the way it is now.

^This is probably the simplest solution. 


Jojo_Fr wrote:

Collective mind would not convert, but could triple the scientist slots of a city

Allowing producing lot of science but as the price of reducing your industry or gold. Which is fine.
It would be situationnaly good if you need a push in science.

^ This is really creative, but possibly hard to implement for the devs. If they could make it work that would certainly make the ability more balanced and interesting. 


The basic problem is that now the tradeoff for activating these abilities is too efficient, and they are almost unrestricted in their use. I feel like you can't even begin to balance the mid-late game techs and game pace until Collective Minds and Landraiser get significant nerfs. 

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3 years ago
Sep 18, 2021, 6:16:12 PM

Simpler to add a fixed massive number of scientist slots, and have 0 of the other.

Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Sep 18, 2021, 11:09:28 PM
Jojo_Fr wrote:

"Another idea could be to make the civilian slots work as researchers or something.

(Instead of making all industry exploitation into sciencce)".


Collective mind would not convert, but could triple the scientist slots of a city

Allowing producing lot of science but as the price of reducing your industry or gold. Which is fine.
It would be situationnaly good if you need a push in science.

This seems like a quite good solution for its simplicity.


However, I think there deffinitely needs to be an efficency tradeoff though. It cannot be a 1-to-1 conversion.

So it could be convert industry + money => science at a 50% ratio?


Or maybe a flat 50% reduction in production/money in exchange for up to 50% boost in science. And have the science bonus limited to the raw value reduction in the other 2 categories.

So, Some examples:
a city produces 100i, 100g, 100s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 150s (100 lost, only 50 gained)
a city produces 100i, 100g, 200s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 300s (100 lost, 100 gained)
a city produces 100i, 100g, 500s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 300s (100 lost, 100 gained - capped)
a city produces 500i, 500g, 50s upon activation it now generates 250i, 250g, 75s (500 lost, 25 gained)
That way a city heavily invested in science would be best, but it wouldn't be as cheesy since you couldn't completely ignore industry or gold in order to minimize penalty and maximize gain.

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3 years ago
Sep 19, 2021, 7:52:18 AM
rendymonyab wrote:
Jojo_Fr wrote:

"Another idea could be to make the civilian slots work as researchers or something.

(Instead of making all industry exploitation into sciencce)".


Collective mind would not convert, but could triple the scientist slots of a city

Allowing producing lot of science but as the price of reducing your industry or gold. Which is fine.
It would be situationnaly good if you need a push in science.

This seems like a quite good solution for its simplicity.


However, I think there deffinitely needs to be an efficency tradeoff though. It cannot be a 1-to-1 conversion.

So it could be convert industry + money => science at a 50% ratio?


Or maybe a flat 50% reduction in production/money in exchange for up to 50% boost in science. And have the science bonus limited to the raw value reduction in the other 2 categories.

So, Some examples:
a city produces 100i, 100g, 100s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 150s (100 lost, only 50 gained)
a city produces 100i, 100g, 200s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 300s (100 lost, 100 gained)
a city produces 100i, 100g, 500s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 300s (100 lost, 100 gained - capped)
a city produces 500i, 500g, 50s upon activation it now generates 250i, 250g, 75s (500 lost, 25 gained)
That way a city heavily invested in science would be best, but it wouldn't be as cheesy since you couldn't completely ignore industry or gold in order to minimize penalty and maximize gain.

I like the idea of science gained is capped at how much loss accrued but I dislike that your had it go from 500s to 300s. Cause not only now are you lowering your gold and industry but your lowering your science as well? I would be pissed if I did that cause I would have crippled my city for zero gain and most players don't even realize why and it's for 5 turns. 

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3 years ago
Sep 19, 2021, 6:55:02 PM

Only somewhat related, but I feel it still fits here.


I feel like another big problem has to do with the 300 fame for each of the end game techs. They should massively increase the cost of these techs and should also probably lower the fame reward to something closer to 50 fame. Picking a scientist culture in the modern era should not just be an "instant win" for anyone. Gameplay and replayability suffer if there is always one objectively "best" way to play and win. Even something as simple as a fame nerf makes it so you don't automatically win anymore and have to excel in other areas first before finishing all the techs if you are behind.

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3 years ago
Sep 20, 2021, 12:32:14 AM
rendymonyab wrote:
Jojo_Fr wrote:

"Another idea could be to make the civilian slots work as researchers or something.

(Instead of making all industry exploitation into sciencce)".


Collective mind would not convert, but could triple the scientist slots of a city

Allowing producing lot of science but as the price of reducing your industry or gold. Which is fine.
It would be situationnaly good if you need a push in science.

This seems like a quite good solution for its simplicity.


However, I think there deffinitely needs to be an efficency tradeoff though. It cannot be a 1-to-1 conversion.

So it could be convert industry + money => science at a 50% ratio?


Or maybe a flat 50% reduction in production/money in exchange for up to 50% boost in science. And have the science bonus limited to the raw value reduction in the other 2 categories.

So, Some examples:
a city produces 100i, 100g, 100s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 150s (100 lost, only 50 gained)
a city produces 100i, 100g, 200s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 300s (100 lost, 100 gained)
a city produces 100i, 100g, 500s upon activation it now generates 50i, 50g, 300s (100 lost, 100 gained - capped)
a city produces 500i, 500g, 50s upon activation it now generates 250i, 250g, 75s (500 lost, 25 gained)
That way a city heavily invested in science would be best, but it wouldn't be as cheesy since you couldn't completely ignore industry or gold in order to minimize penalty and maximize gain.

This is a decent fix if keeping it a similar ability.  I've been thinking about it after having abused it for a speed run where I won in 58 turns on normal speed.  I think turning it into a catchup mechanic is another way to go.  Something along the lines of:


Ancestral Minds:  This city receives 50% more science when researching techs from previous eras or the ancient era and loses 25% industry.  5 turn minimum limit.


It is similar to your idea in that the industry reduction is completely disconnected from the science gain.  I dont think these abilities need to be game breaking, they should just be situationally useful.  My thought is to allow science cultures to help fill out the tech tree, but not have them be able to jump ahead in ways that they have an extreme tech advantage.





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3 years ago
Sep 20, 2021, 2:50:51 AM

For the end game, those techs need to be much more expensive (just like the Mars missions should be).  All techs should be much more expensive (with more “free techs” to tech laggers)

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3 years ago
Sep 20, 2021, 4:29:29 PM

I feel like the science problem is twofold.

First, its a natural consequence of industry being too good - since industry currently fulfills both its own role (building districts & infrastructure), as well as that which is traditionally given to money (recruiting units - leaving nothing for gold to matter for, that industry can't already do - making markets a dead district because just makers will suffice), on top of also being convertible to science via the cultural ability as well. All of this on top of the pop growth formula having heavy diminishing returns, requiring more and more food per pop produced - despite the fact that you can just make a unit in a very small freshly settled city, and disband it in the capital to effective generate food out of nowhere, which allows you to ignore food entirely. If you can disband a unit to get 1 pop, then the food cost per pop grown should not be a variable but a fixed value, otherwise its open to exploits and in general bad side effects.

For example, right now you can make two cities that are full industry with 3 territories each, and no markets, no science quarters and no farmers quarters or any related infrastructure, and then 6 "cities" that are really only a collection of five farmers quarters as well as food infrastructure. What will happen is the two big cities will each lose a pop per turn because they can't lose more than that, and the pseudo-cities will produce ~4 pops a turn, leading to a situation where, despite the big cities being at -2000 food and the 6 small towns being at maybe 100 surplus, with a total balance of -3400 or so, you are instead growing pops. Not only that, you are growing them at a record pace. And there's a Machu Picchu-based strategy to do a similar thing, but even more efficiently.

On the other hand, big cities, even if their population becomes depleted due to recruitment, and even if they produce absolutely obscene amounts of food surplus, will due to the pop growth formula grow very slowly, much slower than a city with far more active pops, but a far lesser population capacity would with a fraction of the big city's food surplus.

Therefore in the game at present:

- There is no need for markets because gold is utterly eclipsed by industry and both interchangeable in 90% of its uses and inferior.
- There is no need for science quarters because industry can be converted to science 1:1 and snowballs itself.
- There is no need for farmers' quarters because food can be outsourced to mini-towns while your big cities starve and you have a gargantuan negative amount of total food balance per turn, yet still grow somehow grow pops - and more than if you had several big cities with half of their districts as farmers quarters.

Therefore industry is king, and you just build makers' quarters which do everything for you, and coincidentally also happen to snowball off themselves. Currently "FIDS" is more like "I".

What I think should happen:

- Units should be recruitable for gold and still cost gold upkeep -> This would make markets or other means of gold acquisition necessary for everyone.

- The food surplus required per pop grown should be a static value -> This would make farmers' quarters worth building.

- Land-Raiser and Collective Mind should be overhauled. Perhaps to instead give +100% Industry/Science in one city at the cost of -50% to all other outputs, but as a five-turn-duration production boom with a 15 turns cooldown (scaled by game speed) that starts ticking down as soon as its used. Overall, this still maths out to a big boost, but no longer a gamebreaking one, and allows for what I think was the intended purpose behind these abilities in the first place - rushing big projects such as wonders or crucial technologies quickly. It also means the collective mind is useful in any era, and not just after stacking industry to the seventh moon and beyond.

- You should require all technologies of the era previous to the current to have been researched to progress to the next, in addition to era stars. This is a trivial objective to accomplish to all nations, since we are basically talking about having all ancient era technologies researched to be able to progress to medieval - and yet it fixes the vast majority of obvious inter-era prerequisites - like sending missions to mars despite not having "Wheel" researched. This would also end the issue of contemporary era civs still using medieval era cities once and for all, since there'd be a minimal standard to which you'd have to keep to progress through the eras.

Furthermore, currently each further tech researched increases all future technology costs, it is currently optimal to just beeline to the last techs skipping as many as possible - to attain science victory by turn 58 / 300 having researched 30% of the techs. Even with science victory disabled, this is still the most cost effective solution to research the entire tree for the cheapest possible cost in research, since if you research the most expensive technologies first, the accruing % increase in cost formula will be inconsequential on the rest of the, mostly cheap and long outdated technologies.

I would propose getting rid of this penalty and instead introducing "knowledge" or a similar mechanic. Basically, civilizations would pool the base technology cost of every tech they ever researched tech, and have that be their "knowledge" value. Each technology would have a midpoint knowledge value around which its cost oscillates. If you try to research a tier ~1000 technology that might cost 200 research points while having around 1000 "knowledge", you would research that tech at mostly the normal price. If you tried to research a tier ~2000 technology that might cost 400 research points, its cost would scale by +50% to you, since you are leaping ahead of time, ahead of the standard of the knowledge base your civilization has accrued, and vice versa - techs of lower tier than your knowledge value would be researched at a discount.

Think of it as trying to research calculus without inventing writing. Sure - you can maybe do it given monumental effort, but the more knowledge you have, the clearer and easier it will be, after all as someone widely considered a huge genius once said, they were just standing on the shoulders of giants. With this kind of penalty, beelining would be possible - it would just be rather costly, long-term.

I believe if all of those changes were implemented, the game's FIDS economy would be in a far healthier state and most if not all districts would get built, instead of just makers' quarters, and since we're in the "collective mind" thread, I'd take a wild guess and say if the above were the case then serious science rushes would be hard pressed to breach turn ~150 on a science victory, rather than doing so by turn ~60, even without adjusting the technology costs, and that would already be quite a lot better than the current state of affairs.

Updated 3 years ago.
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