Diplomacy

That does look like the correct attributes... if you change the first value from 2 to 4 it'll probably double the influence from gold gifts. Only way to know for sure is to test it.

Thanks, will test it tonight. I still don't understand the meaning of each value, will post here what I find. Want to lower the importance of giving gold towards friendship.

Yes, those are the values, still not sure about the exact maths, here are my findings (modded speed and other things also):

Default
MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_MULTIPLIER=2
MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_DIVISOR=3
250gold=+40friendship
500=+80
1000=+165

MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_MULTIPLIER=1.3
MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_DIVISOR=3
250gold=+55friendship
500=+115
1000=+230

MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_MULTIPLIER=2.5
MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_DIVISOR=3
250gold=+40friendship
500=+80
1000=+165

MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_MULTIPLIER=2.5
MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_DIVISOR=2.5
250gold=+20friendship
500=+50
1000=+105

Notice that decreasing the first value increases the effectiveness of gold, increasing the value has no effect if the second value is not reduced. Man, and I sort of like these things but still no clue.

Make the cost of CS alliance increase with distance from capital. Within 10 hexes, the cost is as it is now, then add 10% for each additional hex away from capital.
Increase the cost with each additional alliance beyond 2 alliances.

IP that you earn giving a unit to CS should depend on the unit strength and era and if CS needs units. Something like that:

basic_IP_for_unit = unit_strength/2.
era_modificator = era_of_unit - CS_era
needs_modificator = 1.5 if under barbarian attack
2 if at war with other civ
3 if CS requests units
Then
IP_for_unit_gift = needs_modificator*basic_IP_for_unit*2^era_modificator

Giving an obsolete unit to CS you earn a little (eg. giving a warrior (ancient era) when CS has rifles (Renaissance era) you earn rounded(6/3*2^(-3))=rounded(6/24)=0), but giving them an advanced unit you earn a lot (eg. giving mech inf. (modern era) when CS has rifles (renaissance era) you earn founded(50/3*2^2)=67).

I have another idea: make bribing city-states with gold less effective. You could either completely remove it from the game, or make it so that you can't get better than friendly with gold alone. Also make the effect of fulfilling quests larger.

@rf900
So it looks like the formula is roughly Influence = Gold / (10 * mult/div)... with some rounding. I noticed the influence gains can also vary from one time to another, so there appears to be another factor hardcoded or hidden elsewhere.


@playshogi
There's a sort of implicit diplomatic cost built in. AI's will ignore your pledges to protect CS's far away from your borders, and also get upset if you ally with CS's near them. Distant CS's are also harder to liberate if captured. One design goal of the developers seems to be shifting away from explicit costs to implicit ones.


@marekb
That's a good idea. I think the reason you get ignorable influence from gifting units is because you're making it easier for an ally to defend themselves, thus boosting them in other ways. And they'll fight for you, basically providing you troops without maintenance cost. I agree it's still not terribly tempting though.


@jorissimo
I agree quests need improvement, though that's somewhat beyond the scope of what we can do now. The problem is the majority of CS requests are to kill one another, and with each one you kill it becomes harder to gain influence, so quests are not an effective way of gaining influence even if the returns were increased.

Thalassicus said:

@jorissimo
The problem is the majority of CS requests are to kill one another, and with each one you kill it becomes harder to gain influence, so quests are not an effective way of gaining influence even if the returns were increased.

Click to expand...

Would it be possible to allow multiple quests per CS?

I think any major changes like that will require c++ access, as there's not much I can see about quests in the xml files.

The problem is the majority of CS requests are to kill one another, and with each one you kill it becomes harder to gain influence, so quests are not an effective way of gaining influence even if the returns were increased.

Click to expand...

Yes, but it encourages a player to choose a couple of city-states he's gonna be friends with, and a couple city-states he's gonna destroy for influence.

The change I'd like to see with maritime city states is that they give away fixxed amount of food, then this food is distributed among our cities in correlation of population (bigger cities get more).
I guess it would require programing, not just modifying the sdk (I'm not sure if it's possible at all)

reason behind this:
the other type of city states bonuses don't really depend on empire size, but maritime makes huge empires ridiculously powerfull
smaller cities grow fast anyway, the bigger cities would need extra food more,
and it's more realistic that big cities get more import food

The formula could be something like:
Friendly they give 5 food, a single city maximum can have +2 from this
Allied: 10 food, a single city maximum can have +3

And the base number increases during ages. (maximum value needed for balance)

Thalassicus said:

I think the reason you get ignorable influence from gifting units is because you're making it easier for an ally to defend themselves, thus boosting them in other ways.

Click to expand...

And this should be ok.

Thalassicus said:

And they'll fight for you, basically providing you troops without maintenance cost. I agree it's still not terribly tempting though.

Click to expand...

But CS cannot take city for you. But I agree, that influence for units cannot be to large. Anyway it is a little strange that you always get 2IP. May be more balanced would be situation like that:
IP_for_unit = 2 + (era_of_unit - era_of_CS).
If CS requests units IP_for_unit is multiplied by 5 (or 4 or 3).

In this manner you are encourage to give city states units when they need it an to give them non-obsolete unit.

@jorissimo
True. I guess what I'm saying is it becomes harder to retain influence even with the ones you do choose to ally with, because their influence degrades faster after you complete the kill-quests. So the player gets a temporary influence boost, but it hurts you in the long run.


@mzprox
I agree completely, this is especially imbalanced on larger maps with longer game speeds... the effect of one cultural or military city state is negligible when you have 40 cities, yet you're getting a whopping 120 . The developers might have intended maritime to be dramatically stronger for big empires, but intent is something really hard to determine.


@marekb
City-states can actually capture cities, I've seen it in a few games. It's rare since they have to be within 10 tiles or so. I agree it's pointless to gift them units... better to disband the unit for gold. The thing is, when you give them the gold they use it to BUY units! So it's better all-around.

Maybe maritime CS could only give food bonus like this: "your x largest cities get +1/+2/+3 food" where x depends on map size of course.

This way the 40 city empires can't get 50% of their food from maritime city states.



Also another idea for Militaristic City States: instead of giving a free scout (yay, always happens to me) every 20 turns or whatever, maybe a barracks like effect? They are militaristic after all and they might know a thing or two about training men for combat because it's what their society is about.

Does the military CS changes how many turns it takes to give a free unit depending on game speed?
Ive only played epic so far , and noticed this mod changes the turns to 17 at friendly and 12! at allied.

Considering building units usually takes a 15-25 turns in your prod city's early this is actually a very cheap way to get a army (unless u get unlucky and hit scouts)
I tried it in a game and could keep my city's building on settler / worker / infrastructure while still maintaining the largest army and this was on emperor, I did get lucky though with hitting 3 horseman and a swordsman.
Il test it a bit more and see if I can get the same results.

A worrisome number of things in the game do not adjust for game speed or map size. It's a serious problem I'm looking at ways to solve. That said, yes it can be valuable depending on luck... one of the biggest luck-based parts of the game to be honest. You could get 4 scouts or 4 unique units in a row, and in the early game that's a dramatic spread of power.

True. I guess what I'm saying is it becomes harder to retain influence even with the ones you do choose to ally with, because their influence degrades faster after you complete the kill-quests. So the player gets a temporary influence boost, but it hurts you in the long run.

Click to expand...

I get it. That doesn't make any sense at all. You help them, they like it, but at the same time your influence with them degrades faster. I had this with a major civ too. Washington asked me to join a war with him against the Aztecs. I killed them, I even gave him one of their cities, and then all of a sudden he was angry with me.

Thalassicus said:

A worrisome number of things in the game do not adjust for game speed or map size. It's a serious problem I'm looking at ways to solve. That said, yes it can be valuable depending on luck... one of the biggest luck-based parts of the game to be honest. You could get 4 scouts or 4 unique units in a row, and in the early game that's a dramatic spread of power.

Click to expand...

Thalassicus, could it be coded for Maritime city-states to provide a positive food inflow, but a negative gold influx, one gold for each two food provided?

say

1 0 per city-state
2 -1
3 -1
4 -2

This would put a city-state right in the line of (old) Granary, plus adding the happy resource.

More to point, can terrain yields (and thus the city hex) go into negative?

I think that's something which will require the later c++ part of the sdk, though I'm not sure. At the very least it would be required to tell the AI about the changes, since a gold cost wouldn't be something they currently plan for.

Currently, when city-states are dragged into a war because of their ally status with a civ, they don't really do that much, so are essentially useless as allies (in that sense).
Would it be possible to tweak their AI to be more on the offence when in state of war? Or has it more to do with their flavouring?

I don't know how others experience it, but I see it as a bug/issue, appropriate for a 'patch' mod. (It would significantly increase the usefulness of military city-states though.)

Also:

The Boz said:

Is there any way to limit the units that a CS gives you? I hate it when it gives me Unique Units. I just had a war against Russia, and I charged them with Cossacks given to me by Sidon.

Click to expand...

CS don't give UUs, do they?