A Civ5 approach to vassals and colonies

Louis XXIV

Louis XXIV

Le Roi Soleil
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First off, these aren't going to be Civ4 vassals and colonies. The goal is to start fresh and add a feature that is designed to play well with Civ5's features while still having a relationship to the historical thing of its name. I'm not reinventing the wheel, so these ideas are actually tweaks of current features, but I hope they would give excellent opportunities for new play strategies.

Colonies
Colonies are pretty straight forward to implement. The biggest thing about a colony in Civ4 was that you did not directly control them, but they contributed towards your civilization. In Civ4, they were essentially self-created vassal states. However, in Civ5, the most obvious analogy are Puppet Cities. I think this fits well because the typical laissez-faire colony was something that was only indirectly controlled, founded to produce money for the mother country, and produced headaches when they grew too big (in Civ5 terms, puppet cities will eventually be a happiness liability since you need to unpuppet them and build a courthouse).

Proposal: At some point in the Renaissance (probably Navigation), allow the building of a new unit: The Colonist. The Colonist can build Colonies, which are self-created puppet cities. In addition, the Conquistador should found colonies as well. For game purposes, they will act like regular puppet cities both in happiness costs and in that they don't add to social policy costs. One strategy this opens is the option to get a second wave of expansion and a chance to give larger empires a cultural victory without requiring them to conquer. On the other hand, the delayed expansion (Renaissance) will help mitigate this strategy too much.

Advanced Proposal: I don't think it's necessary, but an argument could be made to give the option to give puppet cities independence. The simplest way I can think of is a menu option where you can select which puppet cities will belong to the newly freed colony.

Vassals
I wrote too much about colonies, so I'll try to make this one shorter. Basically, this one will take advantage of one of the most prominent Civ5 features - City-States. Everything I say will be tentative since I don't know how they're changing the ability to be friends with them. Essentially, when you conquer a City-State, you would not be required to take control of it. You would also get the option to force the CS to capitulate and become your vassal. Essentially, the CS would become "allied" but you would be penalized because that friendship would degrade at a much faster rate. I think this feature would go well with new things like covert espionage missions only without any of the subtlety. I would assume there would be diplomatic penalties, certainly with anyone that was currently allied with the CS.

I feel this will otherwise mirror Civ4 vassals well. CS are dependent on your diplomacy, they come to your aid if you are at war, and they'll give you benefits and access to resources.

So those are my proposals. I feel this adds strategic diversity without simply copy and pasting Civ4 features. Similar to how they're bringing back religion without making it the old version of religion.
 
I like your idea for colonies, seems perfect to me.

It comes relatively late, but just in time to fill up those empty gaps in the old world and ofcourse the new world. Since the colonies start at population 1 and you'll also need to send workers to improve resources and such it will really be a longterm investment, one that will pay-off in territory, resources but also money and culture.


This would resemble colonization nicely. However, we still need something that resembles independence. Something that will cause puppet-cities to start rebelling (unless you let them free) in the end of the industrial, or early modern era.

The only idea I have, and it is not a great one. Is to give a base unhappiness to every puppetcity based on the era. So this will be added to the normal unhappiness from puppetcities.

Ancient, classical: 0
and medieval: 1
Rennaisance: 2
Industrial: 4
Modern: 6
Future: 8

In the beginning this will not be a problem. But at some point you will have to decide to cut your puppetcities loose (they become CityStates I guess...) or to annex them.
 
Your suggestion on colonies are pretty close to mine.

Colonies:I think you can fold the colonist unit into the settler, and simply give it a new 'settle colony' option (essentially a self-created puppet city).

I believe my suggestion also put the tech at Navigation. So we're pretty much in agreement there!

This will allow people to more freely settle islands with resources (usually ignored in the current game, even by the AI) and backfill pockets in their empires.

Vassals:
Yeah, I'm a bit hesistant to make direct suggestions on city-states at the moment because I don't know how it is changing.

A suggestion I think would make sense is that capitulation is there, but for 30 turns you get normal influence degredation, but no one can out compete you on influence, but once the 30 turns are up, you have to rig a successful election or install your new puppet king or you risk a 'revolt' which turns the CS where influence can go negative or degrade at a much faster pace. I suppose a rival civ can also cut the 30 turns of locked influence short with spy missions as well with a revolution.

Again, this will all depend on how in-depth espionage is and how city-states have been revised to update it.
 
Yeah, my suggestion for colonies ended up as basically yours. Do you think Conquistador rules should apply? I.e., can't found on same continent? That could also help with granting independence if the game wants to go down that route.

I could see a free 30 turn protection matched with normal degrade. I don't want to make it too good, though. There's a fear that civs will just act as bully civs and continually conquer CS to restore status. Really, for this to work, forcing CS to capitulate has to be somewhat difficult, imo. But, yeah, let's wait and see after we hear about more about CS changes and then come back to this.
 
Louis XXIV said:
Yeah, my suggestion for colonies ended up as basically yours. Do you think Conquistador rules should apply? I.e., can't found on same continent? That could also help with granting independence if the game wants to go down that route.

I could see a free 30 turn protection matched with normal degrade. I don't want to make it too good, though. There's a fear that civs will just act as bully civs and continually conquer CS to restore status. Really, for this to work, forcing CS to capitulate has to be somewhat difficult, imo. But, yeah, let's wait and see after we hear about more about CS changes and then come back to this.
Click to expand...

Making the settlers able to settle puppets off-continent only will only solve half the problem. Maybe this is only a pangea /large map problem but I constantly encounter issues where a chunk of the map is empty and I know I need to cover it off but have to wait for the AI to settle it and grab those cities.

I recently played a game on Inca and pretty much stuck to the mountains with my super food/production cities and waited till montezuma settled most of the plains above my position and took all of his cities when I was ready as we had been in a cold war since the early game and he was basically warring everyone. Despie his larger army, my small focused strike force had a clear run on his cities for several turns just because he was spread so thin.

I feel what I did with that game breaks the spirit of the game. There are other cases where being unable to backfill spots near my empire breaks diplomacy. When the friendly AI I have open borders with sends their settler to fill a gap in my empire I couldn't backfill on my own due to SP costs, the act became a causus belli because the new proximity suddenly made the AI dislike me a lot more and I knew I could take the city and cover off the territory. This is a broken mechanic and not really helpful to the game. As such settling your own puppet cities should become available later on in the game on-continent or off-continent.

As for how to deal with Conquistador, how do they work? Do they settle puppet cities or non-puppet? (i believe they settle normal cities) Is the unit lost when the city are settled? (i believe they are lost?)

We can keep them the same (off continent), gain the option to settle puppet cities to keep them onpar with our revised settlers and you don't lose the unit after settling. However, the settle option is no longer available for that unit. With these changes, I think that it still leaves an insanely powerful Unique ability for a unit.
 
They currently settle cities because there are no colonies. I think they should settle colonies, however, since it's more realistic and interesting.
 
City states can now be bullied by moving military units nearby, and while this causes the city state to dislike you it can yield some pretty good bits of swag.
Click to expand...

link

I might be satisfied with this. I like the idea of vassals, but it isn't absolutely necessary. Still, there were plenty of points in history where force of arms explicitly changed rulers but wasn't the same thing as annexation. Nor would I count it as puppet cities since I tend to view that as almost more analogous to cities being granted special privileges and rights of autonomy rather than a true puppet state.
 
I like it, we'll see how the trade off is.

If I get massive hate and bullying is essentially a one off thing, I may not like it.

I'm actually sort of interested in seeing if a near permanent 'bullying' is possible. Whereby the CS really dislikes you, but short of a 3rd party intervening, they can't do anything about it and will continually give in.

This will add diplomatic depth and open up opportunities for other civs to find that leverage and all the intrigue around throwing off the yolk of oppression by a certain civ!
 
I like the vassal idea in the OP.

The colony idea has merit, but I think the colonist, or if it's an option given to settlers, should have the same restriction Conquistadors have in order to found a colony (puppet city). That is, it should only be allowed when not on the same continent as the capital. IIRC, a mountain chain that cuts the capital off from the rest of the continent counted the rest of the continent as a separate continent for the purposes of a Conquistador founding a city. That's most likely because you have to embark to get to the other side of the mountains.
 
I like the colony idea, before reading this thread I started a thread on this the last week.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=455920

I will have to add your idea about not being able to build them until later in the game though.

The big change I suggested is that colonies (and puppets if they aren't replaced by the colony) is that colony hitpoints should be reduced to 1/3 a normal city and ranged strength should be reduced to 1/2 a normal city and it takes 5 turns of anarchy in the city to convert from a colony to a normal city.

I did propose a few other changes, but I welcome any comments you may have.
 
The OP reminds me of something I posted on the 2k forums a while ago. So yeah, I like it.

I like Civ 5: Empire and Revolution. An expansion pack that focuses on the colonial era.

Currently civ 5 IMO lacks incentive to settle new lands in the post Medieval eras. The combined effects of the happiness penalty, possible set-backs in progress to build national wonders, SP cost increase, and military units needed to defend the new cities, results that you're often better off not expanding your empire to new lands.

An interesting feature could be a colonist unit made available by a renaissance tech. Like the settler this unit creates cities. But unlike it it creates puppet like cities called colonies. Maybe colonies can only be built overseas from you capital, or a minimum x number of tiles from it. These cities comes with a smaller happiness penalty, does not affect national wonders progress, and with less or no SP cost increase. You will not get the full gold or science income from them, but a good percentage. Not sure how much control should be given over the city management of colonies. Perhaps some sort of part control part autonomy.

As for negative impacts of colonies, that's where the revolutions come into play. A cool feature would be if you decide how high you would tax your colonies. I.e. how high a percentage of their gold income you want as your own income. The higher the tax, the higher the risk of a revolution. This risk also gradually increases as the eras pass, and as colonies grow. (having a colony into the modern era would be very hard). If a colony revolts, you can either grant it it's independence, or try to repress the revolt militarily. If you defeat the rebels within x number of turns, the revolt risk goes to zero for x number of turns and the colonies is under control again.

I'm not completely sure of what should happen with colonies you grant independence, or lose due to revolt. A possibility could be that they turn into a city state, perhaps with multiple cities if the colony had several cities. If you let them go, they start with a small positive relationship modifier towards you, if you lose them due to revolt, they start with a hefty negative modifier against you.

My two cents.

What do you think?
Click to expand...
 
I believe that a 'city happiness' would help a lot with the suggestions about colonies, vassal states and puppet cities.

Cities have a base happiness of 4, every citizen reduces it by 1. Every 5 tiles away from the capitol this base happiness decreases by 1. Every luxury resource adds 4 happiness to the city that has it within it's sphere of influence.
Have a city that is unhappy become unproductive and make military units weaker.
Have a city that is very unhappy generate rebels and slowly take damage and in the end claim independence and become a rebel state. You can either send military and reclaim it (happened in history) or declare it independent and let it become a city state without any benefits other than the resources in it's area.

Something like how all cities had something like health in CivIV (didn't actually play that game).
 
So bringing back happiness at an individualized level? Am I reading that right? That's too much of a change for a system that works fairly well in Civ5.
 
They added them from BTS, iirc. I never used them. Essentially, they made cities on other continents more expensive, but gave you the option to make them a "vassal" instead (which could break away). I just cottage spammed them, settled more sparsely, or avoided the other continent instead. But it was a neat idea if the vassal system worked better.
 
What, you guys ignore those small islands with resources? that's crazy, i actually make bunch of expeditions and go out of my way to bring those islands under my control. And I actually prefer having direct control of what happens there. What's more, they can also act as early warning system, for a enemy invasion fleet headed for your territory.

And uh, if this helps, I never let my colonies become independent nations in civ 4 bts, because screw that. I keep cities under my control, maintenance costs be damned as long as I keep on developing my economics I can keep them as part of my empire which the sun never sets on. And honestly, that did happen, as long as you could keep economy up, colonies's maintenance costs is no problem.
 
Louis XXIV said:
Vassals
I wrote too much about colonies, so I'll try to make this one shorter. Basically, this one will take advantage of one of the most prominent Civ5 features - City-States. Everything I say will be tentative since I don't know how they're changing the ability to be friends with them. Essentially, when you conquer a City-State, you would not be required to take control of it. You would also get the option to force the CS to capitulate and become your vassal. Essentially, the CS would become "allied" but you would be penalized because that friendship would degrade at a much faster rate. I think this feature would go well with new things like covert espionage missions only without any of the subtlety. I would assume there would be diplomatic penalties, certainly with anyone that was currently allied with the CS.
Click to expand...

I really do not like the term vassal. "Client state" seems a better choice of words. I don't know why the system should be limited to just city-states though. It would be interesting if you could turn conquered cities into client states as well.

Also, "client state" negates the faster friendship degrade. What's the point of conquering a CS if you have to pay more money to keep it a client state than just allying with it? One solution could be that the civilization that conquered the city-state and turned it into a client will always be allied with it, whether or not it falls beneath the minimum influence or if another civilization surpasses it.

This could also give coups another use.
***
In diplomacy, a peace option should include decolonization/exchange of colonies.

Colonies should also have a chance of declaring independence if happiness falls below a certain point. Sorta like how rebels spawn, only more effective maybe?
Click to expand...
 
Client-states could work. In Civ4, the term vassals was basically used to represent this phenomena, so I viewed them as interchangeable words.

The reason for the faster degrade is because it's probably far easier to gain an alliance through military conquest than through other means (especially if you've destroyed their military). The faster loss of relationship points has to do with the leadership being seen as illegitimate.
 
Colonies should have a 'National Identity" bar, like the CS influence bar. It will always start at zero, then slowly increases by like 1 point (modified by SP's and UA's. The Social policy tree is getting very crowded nowadays anyways. 2 mid game trees would let the existing trees be more specific. For example, a new mid-game culture tree, with piety going more faith based, and a new mid-game imperialism tree, focusing on military and colonies) every turn. Once national idendity hits certain milestones, the colony becomes less and less effective. For example, your percentage of the colonies yield might go down, at a certain point you can no longer directly recruit troops from the colony and it will automatically recruit for you, higher national idendity and the colony produces its own military units which are not under at your control at all, global unhappiness penalties higher than that, and eventually the colony will start spawning rebels and its existing units revolt and attempt to take the colony. If they succeed, it will become an independent City state.

National identity could also be slowed by altering a tax rate, social policies, proximity to capital, wealthiness and power of colony, and the number of your own troops stationed in the colony itself. It can also be let go of as a colony to become a city state, netting you free influence the earlier you release it (though you shouldn't be able to instantly create then free colonies for insta-allies).
 
CYZ said:
we still need something that resembles independence. Something that will cause puppet-cities to start rebelling (unless you let them free) in the end of the industrial, or early modern era.
Click to expand...

There could be a lot of means to allow them rebelling :

1) Allow them to build separated armies. Once they feel powerfull enough, they can declare independence.
2) contact/affinities : a new layer of calculation that determines how many affinities you have with your colonies. If they start to differ too much, they become independant. (culture would play a great role, as to roads and communications)
3 ) New tax system : there's a bar for every colony that detemrine the percentage of taxes. The more the taxes are high, the quicker the conolies declare independance. This may be influenced by cooperation/dependance/affinities.
 
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