Annex vs Puppet

Gamewizard · Jan 28, 2012

Played a game today with Ver 126. What are the reasons for puppeting now vs annexing? From my observations, annexing only gives 1 more unhappiness regardless of population. I'm assuming annexing also raises policy and GA costs as it always has. However, the city has the -25% modifiers regardless of being occupied or a puppet.

So basically I just don't see the point in puppeting anymore. Annexing gives you production control with little downside.

Also, the courthouse now only removes the -25% modifiers and has nothing to do with happiness, correct? The vanilla bug that removed all city unhappiness with a courthouse seems to be gone, which is great!

Stalker0 · Jan 29, 2012

Gamewizard said:
I'm assuming annexing also raises policy and GA costs as it always has.

Also affects wonders that requires X buildings in your civilizations.

Thalassicus · Jan 31, 2012

I'm relatively sure GA cost is a fixed series: 100, 200, 300, 400, etc. with no association to # of cities. I think vanilla has a bug in the tooltip with inaccurate information about that. I checked this several months ago, however, so things might have changed since then.

I think of three city categories:

Normal
Occupied
Puppet
Razed

The term "annexed" was removed from tooltips because it's ambiguous in vanilla, referring to either normal or occupied cities depending on context. Occupied cities and Puppets produce lower yields (by a percentage) than normal cities. Puppets have +1 :c5happy:

and don't impact policy costs.

Each category is best for the following situations. How we define "large" or "small" depends on circumstances of the game:

Normal
Best for large cities, since turning a puppet into a normal city has fixed costs and percentage benefits.
Occupied
Small cities where controlling production or purchasing tiles is important.
Puppet
Small cities while the city AI makes acceptable production choices.
Razed
Very small and unimportant cities when + unhappiness is a concern.

Txurce · Feb 6, 2012

This is exactly how I play. I think it allows some choice, but largely eliminates one of the most ill-conceived original aspects of vanilla, the prevalence of puppet cities.

Of course, there are occasions when it doesn't matter, like my current insane Songhai game (v126). On T186, with 8 cities and counting in a game aimed at Space from the start, I have the lead in pop and military, 6650g, a culture gap with the runner-up of 117-38, and a science gap of... 592-111. My eyes almost fell out of my head when I saw that. I have the luxury of annexing capitals and finding the happiness to stay positive. (One strat I've been focusing on lately is acquiring the Cultural Diplomacy policy. It makes all the difference in mid-game-plus happiness with a larger empire. With a culture-strong civ like Songhai, I can delay Enlightenment to get it, and still do well scientifically.

EmperorFool · Feb 11, 2012

The use of "occupy" here is confusing in my view. You occupy a city by the mere fact that your troops have smashed the defenses, entered the city, and occupy its space. The city is under your control by force.

Assuming you don't burn it to the ground, once you've subdued the population you have two choices: install a puppet regime with no control over its decisions or annex it into your empire with complete control. I find Vanilla's terminology clearer, but that's not really the point of this post. I just want to make sure I understand the mechanics.

In Vanilla you are allowed to build a courthouse once you've annexed a city as an additional payoff to control and to offset somewhat the increased policy and national wonder costs. Is the same true in this mod?

I understand that puppet cities provide 75% yields (for everything?) and get +1

. And occupying the city reverts this and increases the policy and NW cost just as in Vanilla?

Txurce · Feb 11, 2012

EmperorFool said:
The use of "occupy" here is confusing in my view. You occupy a city by the mere fact that your troops have smashed the defenses, entered the city, and occupy its space. The city is under your control by force.

That is correct. The city has no courthouse, and peace is presumably maintained by force.

Assuming you don't burn it to the ground, once you've subdued the population you have two choices: install a puppet regime with no control over its decisions or annex it into your empire with complete control. I find Vanilla's terminology clearer, but that's not really the point of this post. I just want to make sure I understand the mechanics.

You actually have three choices: to puppet, to not puppet and build a courthouse, and to puppet without a courthouse. The latter is what VEM calls "occupied." Thal explains the strategic reason for each choice above.

In Vanilla, the term "annexed" applied to non-puppet cities with and without a courthouse. This was viewed as confusing, since the courthouse gives an annexed city a major production edge. There were some Vanilla dialog boxes that were flat-out misleading as a result.

In Vanilla you are allowed to build a courthouse once you've annexed a city as an additional payoff to control and to offset somewhat the increased policy and national wonder costs. Is the same true in this mod?

I understand that puppet cities provide 75% yields (for everything?) and get +1. And occupying the city reverts this and increases the policy and NW cost just as in Vanilla?

IN VEM, I believe that building a courthouse removes the 40% "occupied" production penalty. Puppeting offers no production choice, but provides gold as well as no cultural penalty (and a slightly lower happiness penalty). I think all of this is spelled out in detail in one of the stickies.

Jaybe · Feb 11, 2012

EmperorFool said:
I understand that puppet cities provide 75% yields (for everything?) and get +1. And occupying the city reverts this and increases the policy and NW cost just as in Vanilla?

Remember that puppets provide ZERO science for their base population (so a size 10 puppet WITH a Library would provide 5 science).

EmperorFool · Feb 11, 2012

Txurce said:
You actually have three choices: to puppet, to not puppet and build a courthouse, and to puppet without a courthouse.

How can you build a courthouse in a puppet city? You have no control over production, and there's no reason for it to build a courthouse itself. I'm not seeing a third option here unless this is possible somehow.

Txurce said:
In Vanilla, the term "annexed" applied to non-puppet cities with and without a courthouse.

Is there ever any reason not to build a courthouse in an annexed city? I suppose if you had mass excess happiness you can delay it to produce units first, but I mean under normal circumstances.

Jaybe said:
Remember that puppets provide ZERO science for their base population (so a size 10 puppet WITH a Library would provide 5 science).

Okay, so science buildings that apply per population will work but the basic 1 :c5science:

/population doesn't? That makes sense and is a good reason to occupy large cities if you're not worried about speed of acquiring new policies.

Txurce · Feb 11, 2012

EmperorFool said:
How can you build a courthouse in a puppet city? You have no control over production, and there's no reason for it to build a courthouse itself. I'm not seeing a third option here unless this is possible somehow.

Is there ever any reason not to build a courthouse in an annexed city? I suppose if you had mass excess happiness you can delay it to produce units first, but I mean under normal circumstances.

You can't build a courthouse in a puppet city. You have the option to build one in an occupied city. An occupied city varies from an annexed one in that it has no courthouse. As Thal explained in his last post here, you may decide to occupy a city but not to build a courthouse if you need to build something in particular or buy tiles, but don't want to use the turns needed to build a courthouse, because the city is too small or unproductive to merit it.

EmperorFool · Feb 11, 2012

Is there any difference between a city you founded and an occupied city with a courthouse? My understanding is that in Vanilla there is no difference.

wobuffet · Feb 11, 2012

EmperorFool said:
Is there any difference between a city you founded and an occupied city with a courthouse? My understanding is that in Vanilla there is no difference.

In vanilla, I think you can't raze a city you founded.

EmperorFool · Feb 11, 2012

Oh, so you can raze cities you've captured after occupying/puppetting them?

wobuffet · Feb 11, 2012

Actually, you have to occupy a city you've captured before razing it, IIRC. You can either
(1) raze it right away when you capture it (no increase in culture costs), or
(2) puppet it, then occupy and raze it (you get some yields from the puppet, but culture costs increase).

Jaybe · Feb 12, 2012

Txurce said:
You can't build a courthouse in a puppet city. You have the option to build one in an occupied city. An occupied city varies from an annexed one in that it has no courthouse. As Thal explained in his last post here, you may decide to occupy a city but not to build a courthouse if you need to build something in particular or buy tiles, but don't want to use the turns needed to build a courthouse, because the city is too small or unproductive to merit it.

I've almost NEVER built a courthouse in a city I have occupied (except once, I think, many months ago). I PURCHASE them!

--
Also (as a reminder & for those unaware), NEVER occupy a city as soon as it's captured (except to raze it). Always wait until it has completed its revolting period. You can't build/purchase your courthouse until it's finished its resistance anyway.

Thalassicus · Feb 12, 2012

Jaybe said:
Remember that puppets provide ZERO science for their base population (so a size 10 puppet WITH a Library would provide 5 science).

The puppet AI also gives science buildings a low priority for construction, so libraries are rarely built. This is to give peaceful empires a science advantage to counter a militaristic empire's army/gold advantages.

I use the word "occupy" simply because that's what Firaxis uses most in the internal files, such as :c5occupied:

[ICON_OCCUPIED]. Vanilla uses the word "occupy" everywhere except a few ambiguous tooltips. I'm okay with either "annexed" or "occupied," so long as we only use one of those terms.

There is no downside to building a courthouse in an occupied city, other than the time spent doing so.

EmperorFool said:
Is there any difference between a city you founded and an occupied city with a courthouse?

The main difference is the courthouse itself. In vanilla a courthouse has these effects:

3 hidden happiness. This bug's existed since Civ 5 was released, and took a lot of work to fix in CiVUP without access to the game core.
3/turn maintenance.
3 visible happiness from Police State.

In CiVUP-VEM a courthouse has only #3 the Autocracy bonus. So in the mod there's negligible difference between a courthouse-city and self-founded city, which is why I refer to both as a "normal" city.

I'll detail the stats for each type of city below. (continued below due to image limit)

EmperorFool · Feb 12, 2012

Great, that clears up a lot. My only point about the use of the word occupied is that even puppets cities have to be occupied before you can install the puppet, but I don't care too much about that level of semantics. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some other nuance.

BTW, someone suggested a new building above with regard to courthouses or conquest. How about a new national wonder that requires X % of captured cities to have a courthouse that would provide some benefit.

My first thought would actually to change the mechanics to lose more population during conquest. Not as much as Vanilla but more than two as now. The new national wonder--Red Cross--would decrease the population lost, allowing you to retain larger conquered cities. So if you're into keeping large conquered cities, building courthouses in occupied cities and then this new wonder would mean future conquered cities would retain more population. The idea being that the RC would minimize civilian losses by providing battlefield medical services.

Thalassicus · Feb 12, 2012

All Cities

+60 cost for all national wonders.

Self-Founded

4 anger per city
4 anger per 4 population
Adds to policy costs.

Courthouse (annexed)

4
4 per 4
3 from Police State policy (from courthouse).
Adds to policy costs.
Can be razed.

Occupied

5
4 per 3
0 per 1
-25%
-25% surplus
Adds to policy costs.
Can be razed.

Razing

Identical to occupied. A "razing" city is just an occupied city losing 1 population per turn.

Puppet

3
4 per 4
0 per 1
-25%
-25% surplus
No policy cost increase.
Cannot control production.
Cannot purchase tiles.

EmperorFool · Feb 12, 2012

Excellent! :goodjob:

Thalassicus · Feb 12, 2012

EmperorFool said:
My first thought would actually to change the mechanics to lose more population during conquest. Not as much as Vanilla but more than two as now. The new national wonder--Red Cross--would decrease the population lost, allowing you to retain larger conquered cities.

Consider that happiness depends on population:

5 city captured: 8, other yields low.
20 city captured: 24, other yields high.

Unlike earlier Civ games there's no corruption, city maintenance, or war weariness -- only happiness limits conquest speed in civ5. Reducing population reduces anger and lets us conquer faster. It's basically a war-speed balance tool. This is why VEM reduces population loss, to slow down warfare. It's somewhat counter-intuitive.

In your proposal, warfare would be faster than VEM's current state, and building the Red Cross would slow it down. Is this what you want, or is your goal to make conquest harder overall, but easier with the Red Cross?

EmperorFool · Feb 12, 2012

Okay then, instead of altering the population loss, alter the unhappiness/population of occupied cities. Once you've conquered X cities and built the Red Cross, occupied cities experience less unhappiness per population. To make it harder, require the Red Cross to be built in a conquered city.

It's a tough call. My initial thought was to provide a bonus to conquerors that keep the cities they take rather than puppet or raze them. I conquer to acquire a larger empire--population be damned. I guess you're right that smaller cities are more beneficial to conquerors, so it's better to give to encourage keeping large cities.

Annex vs Puppet

Emperor

Baller Magnus

Bytes and Nibblers

Deity

Deity

Deity

civus fanaticus

Deity

Deity

Deity

Barbarian

Deity

Barbarian

civus fanaticus

Bytes and Nibblers

Deity

Bytes and Nibblers

Deity

Bytes and Nibblers

Deity

Similar threads