Ideas for RFC in Civ V?

SalmonSoil said:

Also have you heard of the Rhine?

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The people living in Cologne and Mainz would like to have a word with you

I don't think it's feasible to design an RFC without underlying maps that control expansion. As already pointed out, Civ5's "purchase tiles with culture" mechanic even encourages this sort of thing.

I agree borders usually do follow the terrain, but rivers are an interesting case. On a map they make very neat and strategically convenient dividing lines, and imperial powers have often treated them that way (e.g. Rome and the Danube, France and the Rhine). But historically speaking it's unusual for a border to be decided by officials drawing a line on a map: usually they reflect the boundaries that have naturally arisen between different cultural groups and, more importantly, political entities. And in that sort of circumstance it's very strange for a river to form a boundary. Rivers and fertile river valleys are more likely to be at the centre of human habitation, not the peripheries (e.g. the Nile, the Yellow River, the Tiber, the Seine... I could go on forever). Major rivers also tend to be major trade routes, so often the strategic benefits of rivers as a natural boundary are outweighed by the commercial benefits of controlling (and taxing) ports on both banks. If nothing else, people who live literally on the banks of the river are going to have a maritime economy, and so for them the water is a highway not a boundary--it's much easier to go hundreds of miles downstream in a boat than dozens of miles on foot or horseback--making it a very rare that the people on either bank, or along the length, would be fundamentally separated by language, culture, etc. Incidentally, the same can be said of certain seas; there's a reason the Roman Empire covered the entire circumference of the Mediterranean but, with the exception of Caesar's conquests in Britain and Gaul, never extended far into the interior of Europe, Africa or Asia.

In Civ/RFC terms I guess what that little essay means is that I'd like to see Rhye remove the factors limiting borders spreading across rivers, but not mountain ranges.

Yes, It seems that apart from the scale headache CiV has a whole wonderful bunch of mechanics in place that scream Welcome RFC!

I'm curious as to the next incarnation of stability. Namely, its economic component. Now that there are no cottages to grow, is there really such thing as constant economic growth?

we must break the paradigms of Civ IV that shackle us

Úmarth;9717089 said:

I agree borders usually do follow the terrain, but rivers are an interesting case. On a map they make very neat and strategically convenient dividing lines, and imperial powers have often treated them that way (e.g. Rome and the Danube, France and the Rhine). But historically speaking it's unusual for a border to be decided by officials drawing a line on a map: usually they reflect the boundaries that have naturally arisen between different cultural groups and, more importantly, political entities. And in that sort of circumstance it's very strange for a river to form a boundary. Rivers and fertile river valleys are more likely to be at the centre of human habitation, not the peripheries (e.g. the Nile, the Yellow River, the Tiber, the Seine... I could go on forever). Major rivers also tend to be major trade routes, so often the strategic benefits of rivers as a natural boundary are outweighed by the commercial benefits of controlling (and taxing) ports on both banks. If nothing else, people who live literally on the banks of the river are going to have a maritime economy, and so for them the water is a highway not a boundary--it's much easier to go hundreds of miles downstream in a boat than dozens of miles on foot or horseback--making it a very rare that the people on either bank, or along the length, would be fundamentally separated by language, culture, etc. Incidentally, the same can be said of certain seas; there's a reason the Roman Empire covered the entire circumference of the Mediterranean but, with the exception of Caesar's conquests in Britain and Gaul, never extended far into the interior of Europe, Africa or Asia.

In Civ/RFC terms I guess what that little essay means is that I'd like to see Rhye remove the factors limiting borders spreading across rivers, but not mountain ranges.

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The Sahara blocked Africa, the Parthian Empire blocked Asia, Barbarians blocked Europe (The Romans held their borders at the Rhine and the Danube... funny that.) Rivers provide useful roads, so traveling down and up them is easier, but they provide a barrier if you must travel across them. That is why many cultural and political borders follow rivers. There should be penalties for expansion across rivers. Political borders follow cultural borders which follow natural borders.

Elenhil said:

Now to Mxzs's idea of new city-state types. While I do not like adding new entities needlessly, I do find one thing worthwhile: the mechanics of gradual civ collapse through some of your cities turning city-states.

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On the difference between "soft" collapses and "hard" collapses, our ideas are not that far apart. The only difference is one of technical realization. I suggest using a kind of puppet city to realize the soft collapses and saving the city-states for hard collapses. You also wind up suggesting bringing puppet cities into the mix somehow, so I think there may not even be a difference between our suggestions.

The key point would have to do with how to reverse the "soft" collapses.

Me: A new mechanic would let you conquer your own puppet cities, to bring them back under your political control and give you control of their production, coin, resources, etc. An alternate method would involve using a Social Policy that lets you annex them peacefully, as you can do in the game right now.

Elenhil: A new mechanic would let you turn city-states that are diplomatic allies into cities of your own kind. An alternate method would involve simply conquering them again.

I suppose the better solution would be whichever one is easier to mod, since they both rely on finding a new mechanic.

I actually don't think I'm suggesting anything very much when I suggest adding one more "entity"—the "political puppet" entity. It isn't that complicated, and I actually think it could complement your tile ideas very nicely. If you conquer a foreign city and try to take complete control of it—culturally assimilate it—you would set up a battle royale for cultural control of the tiles. I imagine this mechanic could easily feed data into the stability mechanic so that assimilating foreign cities would cause instability, sometimes resulting in revolt and secession by the conquered cities. The solution for civilizations that have to do lots of conquest would be political conquest without cultural conquest—imperial occupation. So, conquered cities could be held as less unstable political puppets, contributing coin, production, and resources, but not culture and science.


One reason I really like your tile idea is that it might be extended to allow two possibly interesting extensions: Trojan memes and underground civilizations.

An underground civilization is one that does not have political control of any of its own cities, but does have cultural control of at least one. Possibly all of its cities have been conquered by foreign civilizations and turned into political puppets of that aggressor. So, a player might still have cities that are generating science and culture for him. In such cases perhaps he could "cash out" some of his culture for insurgent units or tile control of some of his old cities and their environs. Or, if he is pursuing a cultural victory of some kind (maybe it is one of his UHV conditions, and he is not far from meeting it), he could continue to collect culture points and aim for that kind of victory even though he has been dispossessed of an actual empire.

Or maybe there would be a mechanic that could let him hoard up his cultural points and use them to stage a hostile takeover of the civilization that is occupying some of his land—the Trojan meme. Remember, he would be drawing culture points from many of his old cities, and the civilization that had them under imperial, political control would not. Instead of cashing out his culture in social policies, tile control, or insurgencies, he could save them up and if/when his culture reaches a certain percentage of the total culture generated by one his occupiers he could simply take over that civilization: All his old cities would revert to his full control, and he would get political control of the aggressor civilization's cities. Basically, the alien empire, being a culturally impoverished sort of thing (at least, relative to the culturally rich civilization that it conquered), it is vulnerable to being taken over from the inside by the cultural elites of the nation it conquered. An illustration:

You are Egypt, and you were playing for a UHV victory, but barely missed it. Since you are a cultural powerhouse you generate great gushing gobs of culture from your wonders and your buildings. But your military is weak and your three big cities are overwhelmed by the Arabs. However, they only took them as political puppets, for their production and resources, and the culture generated by Thebes and Memphis and Alexandria continues to go into your pocket. Instead of launching insurgencies, you save it up. Eventually you hit the magic point, and your three cities revert fully to your control. In addition, Mecca, Jerusalem, and the other cities built or taken by the Arabs become your political puppets. In essence, you are now the Arabian Empire, but centered in Thebes rather than in Mecca.

I like this political puppet concept (as a consequence of conquest) better than that of settlers founding different kinds of cities/colonies/whatnot. But to make it balanced you must first think how it may be reverted. In your example, I play Arabia and I don't wont my newly conquered Egyptian 'political puppet' cities to one day flip back to sovereignty. What should I do? If the cities continue to generate their original culture, where does it come from? From the buildings? If they are already there, and generating Egyptian culture, what can I possibly add to generate Arab one? You can't possibly make two sets of buildings in one city.

Yeah, a lot of things would have to be balanced, and the best solution might emerge out of other changes elsewhere in the adaptation. Quickest idea, off the top of my head, is to modify Courthouses, which are already used to bring Occupied cities to heel.

Political puppets might be relatively easy to add, since there is already the Occupied mechanic in play. So, currently, if you conquer a city you can turn it into a puppet city or you can annex it and turn it into an occupied city. In the modification, if you conquer a city you can assimilate it (which means it passes directly to your full control, but with some pretty big penalties) or you can occupy it (which means you only take control of its coin, resources, and production) for fewer penalties. Currently, when you annex a city you get the chance to build a Courthouse (which is a building that IIRC only appears in annexed cities, not built cities). In the modification, when you occupy a city you get the chance to build a [modified Courthouse; a Governor's Palace?], which generates counteracting culture and dampens down on the stability hits from occupation. Great Artist culture bombs might also have a use here.

BTW, since in CiVanilla, Courthouses only appear when cities are occupied, I'm guessing it might be possible to add other buildings that would only appear as buildable choices when a city has been conquered. This, in practice, means that in fact there could be "two sets of buildings" available to the conqueror to use in assimilating a conquered city; which I think is kinda neat!

As for being able to found different kinds of cities; yeah, that might be a complication too far. But I'm trying to think in terms of early play and very late play. Founding cultural puppets early on would be a way of getting a largish civilization going early on the cheap. Founding political puppets would be a late-game way of practicing resource-grabbing on the cheap. I'm especially thinking in terms of the European colonial empires, because I'm not so foolish as to think all those civs will be merged (as per my suggestion elsewhere) into one "Western" or "European" civilization.

Mxzs said:

Yeah, a lot of things would have to be balanced, and the best solution might emerge out of other changes elsewhere in the adaptation. Quickest idea, off the top of my head, is to modify Courthouses, which are already used to bring Occupied cities to heel.

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Not sure about that, though. Seems, if anything, too easy.

Political puppets might be relatively easy to add, since there is already the Occupied mechanic in play.

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It was just the idea of various city-types for the settlers to found that I thought redundant, mind you.

In the modification, if you conquer a city you can assimilate it (which means it passes directly to your full control, but with some pretty big penalties) or you can occupy it (which means you only take control of its coin, resources, and production) for fewer penalties.

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Wait a minute! Occupy? That's just brilliant! That's exactly like the board game, Mare Nostrum, that I like. Annex (assimilate), occupy of raze - just the right number of options! And the term itself - to occupy - gives me a great idea how to realize it. It's the troops that bring it to heel, see? You station a unit there and while it's intact the city is occupied, not fully annexed. You get out of it, and probably , too, but not . And probably resources and no culture and happiness costs, too, to make this option really attractive (though we need to balance not to make it too attractive).

I can even think of the way to turn in into a puppet city or annex it later - a certain building (like the Governor's Palace you suggested), not cheap to think twice before building it. A tough choice - either build units, etc. and face potential overthrow - or begin slowly annexing it though building GP. The thing is that an occupied city is more unstable (not necessarily in RFC Stability terms) - it's just that it is easier to retake. And the reason it's easier to retake is that its populations resists the occupying forces. And it will be the unit that gets attacked instead of the city when the enemy tries to retake it (though the unit may get a certain fort-like fortification bonus from it). If they wear down the unit sufficiently the population itself will be able to drive it out, and the city will flip (perhaps a simple mechanics may be of use here - city strength vs. the occupying unit's strength, though the unit will have to have a bonus as cities are usually stronger than units).

So, it's the question of garrisoning the occupied cities with crack troops to keep them obedient.

Аnd since an occupied city produces no culture (instead, it sort of keeps producing the culture of its former owner civ), that culture may build up, too, to produce a culture-driven overthrow. A specific threshold of culture vs unit strength is due here.

There are endless possibilities rising out of it, and it represents resistance, guerrilla, and liberation mechanics decently.

I always percieved the current puppet-state mechanic already ingame as representing political puppets... What about Puppet State -> Occupied City -> Assimilated City (As if you founded it)
Puppet State is what we have in game atm, a country that is your puppet. An Occupied City is a city you have occupied and added to your empire, but not to your culture (works with the current occupied city mechanic + the insergent culture mechanic. And an assimilated city would be a city that you have culturally dominated and functions like a normal city (acts as if you had founded it).
Arabia should have a UP which allows them to Assimilate all cities at no cost.

If Rhye really takes a liking for this new Occupation option, perhaps he will consider reviewing the Vanilla puppet city feature itself.

The underlying reason is simple: there mustn't really be more than 3 options for a conquered city. If you add one, another one must go. And here's why I think it's the puppets that should be shown the exit.

First of all, puppets are a really queer fish. They can build lots of high-maintenance buildings that later you won't be able to dismantle - thus ruining your economy with a crazy building spree. Anti-fun.

Secondly, the whole idea of a city providing you with commerce and culture but not units and no policy costs is somewhat dubious to me.

Let's start with the latter one. Social policy costs scale up with the number of cities because it is the cities that SPs affect. More cities = more trouble to bring policies to them. Now, SPs that improve regular cities seem to affect puppet cities, too (need to confirm that, though). How so, if puppets do not add to the cost of implementing them? Then again, isn't it itself strange that they give you culture, in a sense, for free? That leads to crazy things like "Best Culture victory is to conquer half the world turning every city into a puppet while yourself having 1-2 cities to keep the costs down" strategy. Anti-logical.

Lastly, why should a quasi-independent city give you money and research but not units, after all? Does the idea of independence (for why should they not produce unhappiness unless they do not think themselves oppressed?) really come down to merely building what you want (and working the tiles you want)? Anti-realistic.

Instead of puppet cities I suggest adopting occupied citied already sketched earlier.

PROs:
- you exploit the city's commerce, production, and resources (the obvious choices);
- you don't really annex the city into your empire for it to affect your global happiness;
- you don't have to build a costly building to mitigate unhappiness before it can start pumping out useful buildings and units;
- anything else to make it more interesting;

CONs:
- you don't get culture (and, possibly, research, too);
- the city is more vulnerable with the occupying unit taking the damage directly;
- the city is prone to liberation;

Elenhil and I are the same page (which pleases me no end, since I like the way he thinks). I like his terminology better, too, and agree with his reasoning.

The current "puppet city" conceit is nifty and often useful, but it is conceptually goofy. In the real world, armed conquest gives you political control, and political control gives you tax revenues, resources, and the ability to control what your victim builds. It does not turn its culture overnight into yours, or mean that its culture goes toward improving and extending your own.

The kind of puppets that CiV has introduced only make sense as cities that are culturally related but politically independent of each other. As such, the relationship between you and a CiV puppet is like that between Athens and Sparta, not between Rome and Jerusalem, or Washington DC and Baghdad. I happen to like these kinds of puppets, because I like it when games notice the distinction between civilizations and empires (a difference that eludes too many people for some peculiar reason). But they would only have a natural application if you could found a city as a puppet and later on annex it. But that would be a different mechanic, and though I like it and would lobby for it, it would have to be developed within a new facet of RFC gameplay.

EDIT: Forgot to add that the current "puppet city" construct also works well, as Elenhil has noted, in cases of collapsing civilizations, where they mimic political fragmentation without implying a cultural separation between the newly independent states and statelets.

I more and more tend to think that the current 'puppet' condition is only realistic as an intermediate stage between a healthy state and a collapsing one. By far more realistic than a result of a military conquest. If Rhye limits the puppet phenomenon to separatism and let occupation take its place as a post-conquest option, I'll be thoroughly satisfied.

As to founding puppets like you've said, it looks realistic enough to me, too, but not quite playable. A settler is an important investment for a city. To have it build anything other than a proper city seems a waste of resources.

Rhye, plz make a new MOD, CiV is getting boring already

I was thinking about UPs (or UAs). Now they're in civ V vanilla it would stand to reason that Rhye wouldn't have to redo them, but I'd like it if he did. IMO the RFC ones were a lot more interesting - they were often completely new gameplay mechanisms, whereas the Civ V UAs are more like leader traits in that they just tweak statistics a bit. More importantly, there are a few vanilla UPs which an Earth map will severely nerf. In particular:

Germany - upon defeating a Barbarian unit inside an encampment, there is a 50% chance you earn 25% gold an they join your side
By the time it spawns all the encampments in Europe could be gone, and since they're landlocked and hemmed in by other civs Germany is the least likely civ to go barbarian-busting in America, Africa or Eurasia.

Greece - city state influence degrades at half and recovers at twice the normal rate
Presumably there won't be room for a lot of city states near Greece itself. And having the Greeks going far abroad building a colonial empire through alliances with far-flung city states is ahistorical.

Japan - units fight as though they were at full strength even when damaged
I think this is overpowered. Anyway, Japan shouldn't be encouraged to be expansionist.

Ottomans - 50% chance of converting a Barbarian naval unit to your side and earning 25 gold
This is underpowered enough in vanilla - and since they'll spawn in the middle of other civs when are the Ottomans going to encounter barbarian ships?

Those are just the ones I think have major problems. I think pretty much all of them are boring and should be changed.

USA one might need a chance too, discount on land buying? Maybe get RFC IV power back

Given that there already will by a Native American civ in place, land buying will hardly be needed. Unless Rhye introduces a tile flipping feature.

Also, Aztecs will probably not benefit much from their UA having only the Native Americans and the Barbarians nearby.

As for Songhai - they will be stuck in Africa with Egypt, and there will most likely be not too many Barbs in XIV. And the second part of their UA would make them an eternal nemesis of Egypt, which would not be historically correct.

I think the USA one is actually pretty good, it will allow them to make up for the fact that all their cities are new and don't have much culture yet. Also it means they can grab all those tiles that they don't want to found cities near (All those resources in the Rockies).

Elenhil said:

Given that there already will by a Native American civ in place, land buying will hardly be needed. Unless Rhye introduces a tile flipping feature.

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I hope Rhye will treat Iroquois like he did the Celts in RFC. It just doesn't make sense to have them as a full playable civ.