Why did we add immigration to the game? What's the purpose here? Is this an effect from a patch from Firaxis? Who's idea was this?
I started playing a marathon mode game, huge map, 16 civs, 32 city states, prince difficulty. I'm growing my cities along pretty nicely playing a tall empire strategy with Babylon then BAM! I'm getting hit with citizen after citizen after citizen immigrating to my cities from other civilizations. The cities are growing so FAST that I can't support them. I can't work the tiles around the city because it takes around 20 turns to build a farm or other tile improvement. The cities are in starvation and losing population, but immigrants just keep pouring in one after the other. It's completely ridiculous.
I just quit the game in frustration and deleted the Immigration folder from the mod. I really enjoy the mod, but this is a game-changing effect deviating from the core game for no good reason that I see. I really don't like that it affects the American unique ability making that civilization unplayable once I've deleted immigration from the mod. I'd really like to see immigration removed from the game or at least not affecting the American civilization.
I already keep a list of changes that I make to CEG so that when I install a new version I remember to make those changes before playing. Right now that list is:
1. Double all faith costs to make religions appear later in the game, require more work, and spread slower. This reduces missionary spam, and makes religions require more effort. They are very powerful and should require a greater investment.
2. Delay Cargo Ships until Astronomy. I experimented with delayed until Compass, but it still seemed a little early. I may change it to Carvel Hulls now with that tech back in the game and Carvel Hulls being a little weak already. The purpose of that is to make caravans more important (along with caravansaries). Land trade is neglected with early Cargo Ships, and the AI civs can't protect their sea trade routes from barbarians. Cargo Ships are so expensive. The AI shouldn't be wasting hammers on something that will be surely pillaged.
3. Increase unhappiness from occupied cities. I increase unhappiness per population from 1 to 1.34. This gives you a bit more motivation to build that courthouse in an occupied city, especially for larger cities. It has the desired effect of puppetting small cities. Then, when a city gets bigger you see the potential science it could produce so you occupy it. The extra unhappiness makes you want to get that courthouse built as a high priority instead of going for other attractive buildings like a university, market, etc.
4. Restore city connection gold income to the base, unmodded game's values. This helps the AI because they build roads pretty quickly compared to me. It makes it more viable to have a city further away from your capital. Roads are cheaper (since the connection brings in more gold).
5. Change social policy trees unlocking eras. Tradition, Liberty, and Honor remain in the ancient era. Piety in the Classical era (goes well with increased religion costs). Asthetics and Patronage in the Medieval Era. Exploration and Commerce in the Renaissance Era. Rationalism in the Industrial Era. Ideologies in the Modern Era (unchanged). This lets the game develop a bit more slowly. In every era something new is unlocked and you have something to look forward to. You pay more attention to those earlier trees because that's all you have for a little while. There's also something unlocked going into the Industrial Era, which didn't exist before. It also keeps the AI from diving into the Piety tree and wasting policies on junk that won't have any effect early in the game.
Those are the changes I'm already making to the mod along with the reasons why for each change. I don't want to have to add deleting Immigration plus altering the American unique ability too.
I started playing a marathon mode game, huge map, 16 civs, 32 city states, prince difficulty. I'm growing my cities along pretty nicely playing a tall empire strategy with Babylon then BAM! I'm getting hit with citizen after citizen after citizen immigrating to my cities from other civilizations. The cities are growing so FAST that I can't support them. I can't work the tiles around the city because it takes around 20 turns to build a farm or other tile improvement. The cities are in starvation and losing population, but immigrants just keep pouring in one after the other. It's completely ridiculous.
I just quit the game in frustration and deleted the Immigration folder from the mod. I really enjoy the mod, but this is a game-changing effect deviating from the core game for no good reason that I see. I really don't like that it affects the American unique ability making that civilization unplayable once I've deleted immigration from the mod. I'd really like to see immigration removed from the game or at least not affecting the American civilization.
I already keep a list of changes that I make to CEG so that when I install a new version I remember to make those changes before playing. Right now that list is:
1. Double all faith costs to make religions appear later in the game, require more work, and spread slower. This reduces missionary spam, and makes religions require more effort. They are very powerful and should require a greater investment.
2. Delay Cargo Ships until Astronomy. I experimented with delayed until Compass, but it still seemed a little early. I may change it to Carvel Hulls now with that tech back in the game and Carvel Hulls being a little weak already. The purpose of that is to make caravans more important (along with caravansaries). Land trade is neglected with early Cargo Ships, and the AI civs can't protect their sea trade routes from barbarians. Cargo Ships are so expensive. The AI shouldn't be wasting hammers on something that will be surely pillaged.
3. Increase unhappiness from occupied cities. I increase unhappiness per population from 1 to 1.34. This gives you a bit more motivation to build that courthouse in an occupied city, especially for larger cities. It has the desired effect of puppetting small cities. Then, when a city gets bigger you see the potential science it could produce so you occupy it. The extra unhappiness makes you want to get that courthouse built as a high priority instead of going for other attractive buildings like a university, market, etc.
4. Restore city connection gold income to the base, unmodded game's values. This helps the AI because they build roads pretty quickly compared to me. It makes it more viable to have a city further away from your capital. Roads are cheaper (since the connection brings in more gold).
5. Change social policy trees unlocking eras. Tradition, Liberty, and Honor remain in the ancient era. Piety in the Classical era (goes well with increased religion costs). Asthetics and Patronage in the Medieval Era. Exploration and Commerce in the Renaissance Era. Rationalism in the Industrial Era. Ideologies in the Modern Era (unchanged). This lets the game develop a bit more slowly. In every era something new is unlocked and you have something to look forward to. You pay more attention to those earlier trees because that's all you have for a little while. There's also something unlocked going into the Industrial Era, which didn't exist before. It also keeps the AI from diving into the Piety tree and wasting policies on junk that won't have any effect early in the game.
Those are the changes I'm already making to the mod along with the reasons why for each change. I don't want to have to add deleting Immigration plus altering the American unique ability too.