Gliese 581
Your average civ junkie
So many of us has discovered the easy exploit of keeping the REF small by not generating bells until the very end. Since REF is directly tied to bell generation only you actually get a very easy win by deleting almost all your citizens before the DOI so that you only need a few bells to get a high enough rebel sentiment for the declaration.
Since cannons don't count for rebel sentiment you can have a huge stack of these for all your fighting needs vs a virtually unchanged REF. I posted a demonstration game of this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=293126
I don't think the REF should scale to anything or at least not only scale to something but be partly a linear increase over time tied to difficulty as well.
As long as the REF is scaled to something, no matter what that is, there is potential for exploiting it. What stops you from conquering the whole world with quechuas in CIV on at least higher difficulties?
The AI not immediately hit expand and advance in technology with which you can't keep up only building quechua units. This is an inevitable development that happens gradually over time.
The same thing needs to be in place in col2 where you actually need to build a strong economy and colonial empire sooner rather than later depending on difficulty level to be able to match the REF. If you can take your time by working around something that the REF scales to be it guns, bells or whatever, you can always set up a situation to do a late game push where you obtain the needed item so fast that the king has no time to react.
Now it would be fine to add a secondary effect of stuff like this to an already main effect of continously increasing REF from the start of the game. I don't think liberty bells should affect REF at all though since it's punishing another game mechanic already in place. The cost/benefit of getting bells for FFs as contrasted with the cost/benefit of building infrastructure or working & refining trade commodities. Tradeoff already in place and I don't see a reason to actively punish early bell collection, it's like putting in penalties for building too many wonders in CIV. What's the point of that? You can already lose games by not focusing enough on expansion, military or economy in CIV in pursuing too many wonders.
With the right tweaks the same could hold for col2. Put everything into getting FFs? Well you got them all but now unfortunately you got no gold to pay for your expanding empire, or, an AI colony attacked and wiped you off the map.
So with these things in mind I would suggest a primary linear buildup of REF tied to difficulty (and perhaps game speed and such) with possible secondary effects such as refusing demands (some demerit need to be in place for this) and getting lots of cannons.. etc.
Since cannons don't count for rebel sentiment you can have a huge stack of these for all your fighting needs vs a virtually unchanged REF. I posted a demonstration game of this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=293126
I don't think the REF should scale to anything or at least not only scale to something but be partly a linear increase over time tied to difficulty as well.
As long as the REF is scaled to something, no matter what that is, there is potential for exploiting it. What stops you from conquering the whole world with quechuas in CIV on at least higher difficulties?
The AI not immediately hit expand and advance in technology with which you can't keep up only building quechua units. This is an inevitable development that happens gradually over time.
The same thing needs to be in place in col2 where you actually need to build a strong economy and colonial empire sooner rather than later depending on difficulty level to be able to match the REF. If you can take your time by working around something that the REF scales to be it guns, bells or whatever, you can always set up a situation to do a late game push where you obtain the needed item so fast that the king has no time to react.
Now it would be fine to add a secondary effect of stuff like this to an already main effect of continously increasing REF from the start of the game. I don't think liberty bells should affect REF at all though since it's punishing another game mechanic already in place. The cost/benefit of getting bells for FFs as contrasted with the cost/benefit of building infrastructure or working & refining trade commodities. Tradeoff already in place and I don't see a reason to actively punish early bell collection, it's like putting in penalties for building too many wonders in CIV. What's the point of that? You can already lose games by not focusing enough on expansion, military or economy in CIV in pursuing too many wonders.
With the right tweaks the same could hold for col2. Put everything into getting FFs? Well you got them all but now unfortunately you got no gold to pay for your expanding empire, or, an AI colony attacked and wiped you off the map.
So with these things in mind I would suggest a primary linear buildup of REF tied to difficulty (and perhaps game speed and such) with possible secondary effects such as refusing demands (some demerit need to be in place for this) and getting lots of cannons.. etc.
Historically that only happened with half of the empires represented in Col.
