Idea for Austria nerf

strange that no one seems to have suggested a time-limit between annexiations?!
maybe once or twice per epoch, or wait for 20 turns or something?

It could be also a gamble , % of sucess of Marriage (hey, despite its being connected to relation between males and females, it's still infiltration action ) may be based on Influence with CS, and 100% sucess could be just on 160 influence and above
If you fail you lose money

What I'd like to see is Austria being allowed to only marry CSes that have the designation "Royal", and the CSes who will get this designation will be randomized from game to game.

imo Austria is over-powered for the AI since they never need to worry about happiness and can marry like there's no tommorow, but not that OP for human players

tofofnts said:

imo Austria is over-powered for the AI since they never need to worry about happiness and can marry like there's no tommorow, but not that OP for human players

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I see that more as a challenge than anything OP

Slvynn said:

It could be also a gamble , % of sucess of Marriage (hey, despite its being connected to relation between males and females, it's still infiltration action ) may be based on Influence with CS, and 100% sucess could be just on 160 influence and above
If you fail you lose money

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I think this could be a good solution, and a realistic one.
This way, you can try to keep your influence with some city-states to prevent Austria to absorb them.

This is not an annexation in terms of military conquest, the CS is willing to join Austria, so no need for a courthouse or to be "liberated".

Xotite potancev said:

Strange how if your royalty its a brilliant diplomatic coup if your not its pimping your daughter and punishable by a jail term

Having played with and agaisnt Austraia i dont think it needs changing. Is the advantage really that much better than a CS? Greece has the best bet 0% decrease per turn in favor loyal CS throwing gifts at you and not having to worry about all those whiney cities you took over driving your happiness down.

The bums rush for land no longer happens, if you want 10 cities build them where you want no need to buy out CS.

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It's the free units. You can buy a nice city and a modern army for 500 gold with this mechanic.

I used it on Deity but the huge population you have to deal with, nicely balances it. Maybe make it 90 influence and 750-1000g gold

Here's an idea. Don't include units when you buy out a city state and include a 50% chance for unhappiness, population decrease (people leaving the city in protest), and 25% chance of city-wide riot(building damage).

Anyone remember buying cities outright in Civ2 with Diplomats and Spies? The cost of the city was determined by the shield cost of all structures and units in the city. You pay for what you get. Why can't this be implemented for Austria?

Building cost + unit cost + base marriage cost = total cost to marry.

You people don't get the idea it ain't annexing it if you're marrying they are not being militaristicly being conquered so no annex they people want to join. Slyvnn had the right idea.

smallfish said:

I see that more as a challenge than anything OP

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I've only just finished my first game of G and K. (Don't have a lot of time). I've been reading the debate about Austria on these boards - is it OP or not. I kind of sided with your opinion that it's a challenge not OP, until I got into the modern era of the game I've just finished. I was playing the Mayans, immortal, continents, standard. I've got a screenshot - I guess many of you who have played against Austria have seen this kind of thing already.

To cut to the chase, Austria went very easily and very quickly into total global domination. For me what initially seemed like a challenge in the late game quickly became boring. The factors that had made the game intersting until then, finessing diplomacy to get RA's, spying, gathering intelligence etc, quickly disappeared as the other AI civs vanished. From the modern age onwards the game became a warring plod to the finish line. Which for me was les of a challenge and more of a disappointment.

The AI cheats, we all know it. Fine. I don't have a problem with that. But Austria's UA not only gives it an advantage agains the human, but an enormous one against all other AI civs - and this is the MAJOR problem with it IMV. It effectively allows it to buy the world. At the higher difficulties the huge amounts of cash it generates mean it can just shop its way around the globe. The advantage just multiplies exponentially the more CS's it buys. Austria quickly becomes a superstate that noone can stop. I'd love to hear from anyone who has played a game at immortal or Deity, where this hasn't happened (barring an early game rush by the human player to crush Austria). From what I saw, this seems to me to be inevitable with every game with Austria in.

Having a single runaway civ at this difficulty level is not inevitable. TBH, I played a lot of games with this set up with vanilla (standard, continents, immortal), and never saw one runaway. DEity played a little differently - but again, a runaway wasn't inevitable.

I really really enjoyed my game up until then. Religion, spying and the changes to diplomacy added a variability that wasn't in vanilla. However once Austria started shopping -the colour and multiple flavours vanished. IMV a UA that gives a civ a major advantage over the other AI civs, is not a challenge to the human player, but OP and boring. I don't want to have an end game against Austria EVERY single time I play and they're randomly chosen as an opponent - but the UA leads me to conclude that 7 times out of ten, it will play out that way.

There are some good nerfs suggested here. Definitely, the cost of a marriage needs to seriously exponentially increase each time one is made. However, my own personal nerf suggestion would be a button to exclude Austria from the random civ selection Can anyone mod me that?

smallfish said:

I see that more as a challenge than anything OP

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It doesn't matter whether it's on the AI side or the player. The power of those CS cities being added to your empire is way off tilt with how easy it is to acquire them.

500 gold (just slightly more than two luxuries) + 60 influence (for 1 turn) for a fairly large pop city all decked out with buildings, a small army AND it's penalty free? Come on, no other civ has anything that powerful.

My suggestion:
Base the cost of marrying the city state on an individual "score" value of the city itself. This would include the buildings, troops and population. Perhaps incorporate a discount for influence over 60. That way sneaking super CS cities with crap influence will be very expensive, but otoh you are rewarded for marrying CS's you've invested time in.

Austria is crazy overpowered.

I just played a game as Austria and married pretty much every CS on the map. It was easy, too. No build up an army, no move your armies around. Just one thousand, then five hundred - BOOM. You've got a CS that can only be taken away by force.

Ridiculously over powered. This must be fixed.

No gambles please; losing because you spent a bunch of gold that didn't pay off is just frustrating, not difficult, and will just make for a bunch of reloads, which is generally a sign that people are having their fun ruined.

Scaling gold costs - either per use or by era - is the right way to do it. Having to own the City-State for a minimum # of turns as an ally is also a possibility.

Alternatively, marrying a city state makes every city state trying to get other players to kill it declare permanent war on Austria.

Crushing them with force turns the rest against you.

CaptainKapow said:

My suggestion:
Base the cost of marrying the city state on an individual "score" value of the city itself. This would include the buildings, troops and population. Perhaps incorporate a discount for influence over 60. That way sneaking super CS cities with crap influence will be very expensive, but otoh you are rewarded for marrying CS's you've invested time in.

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That's good. Overall this formula may work:

[fixed base cost]
+ [extra cost per marriage, with less increase on larger maps]
+ [the CS's "score"]

These are all factors that are known before Austria becomes allies with a CS, so the game can tell them how much it will cost before they start investing.

CaptainKapow said:

My suggestion:
Base the cost of marrying the city state on an individual "score" value of the city itself. This would include the buildings, troops and population. Perhaps incorporate a discount for influence over 60. That way sneaking super CS cities with crap influence will be very expensive, but otoh you are rewarded for marrying CS's you've invested time in.

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I like this suggestion.

I played against Austria once. They were doing pretty well. Destroyed Washington, started to go for Isabella, but then they decided to pick on me. Few turns later I had my borders with Isabella

Buff Austria - it's too weak.

Scale it by era. 500 gold to puppet/annex it is chump change in the atomic era+.

500 into medieval, then 750 renaissance, 1000 industrial, 1250 modern, 1500 modern, 1750 information.


Or something like that.