Replacing Inflation

Spirictum said:

Do you think so? It can be much more effective then it was. That was the dumb AI doing it.

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I could always invest some time into making the espionage AI more ruthless.

Spirictum said:

All I said brings some ideas to make the mission more complex, like checking civics and world size. TBH I think such a mission should be needed twice in a single city with 0% of the rev bar filled to go Danger. It's just unfair that a city go to Danger with a single mission, independently from how much the rev bar was previously filled. This alone would already make the mission more fair, the ideas to make it more complex may wait more important changes, but my opinion is more related to game balance then anything else.

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I'm open to looking at balance but I don't really think the effect is overpowered. I do think it can be a bit abrupt, maybe adding 1000 (half the rev bar) rev instability, plus something like 50 instability for 25 turns. That would have the same effect but give players a bit of time to react.

Spirictum said:

If this mission is allowed you may create infinite training grounds, creating the possibility of the most epic slaughter conquest strategy:

1- Become powerful, big and stable;

2- Choose a border nation and put a lot of EPs on it;

3- Coordinate some spies to become strong and put them in key cities of this neighbor;

4- When the time is right declare war against them;

5- Again when the time seems right use the spies and create havoc on the enemy land with your SoD(s);

6- Cities will start rebelling to you, then be sure to reduce every city to at least a single troop of the enemy and let them rebel forever (revolutions remove city defense and weaken troops, would you want anything else?);

7- Declare war to whoever declares war on your new "training grounds" and repeat the process;

This way you will let the subjugated civ spawn troops from rebellion to you infinitely, what means your cities are allowed to only make buildings and other stuff that's not troops. You grow economically a lot faster with the biggest army in the world where you want to sacrifice troops because you keep making more and more each turn. Sometimes enemies even gift you some of their cities, and gifting means getting much more buildings and all the of the city. Rebellion also reduces unit maintenance costs for a time (it decays every turn, but replenishes when a new revolt happens). Didn't test yet, but revolutions used to gift settlers and GGens if they ocurred in 2+ cities. Also they spawn spies with 50% stationary bonus, which means cheap missions in rebelling cities and more spies for you too.

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This is a tested and time proven strategy for military conquest. Go ask the Aztecs.

Afforess said:

I'm open to looking at balance but I don't really think the effect is overpowered. I do think it can be a bit abrupt, maybe adding 1000 (half the rev bar) rev instability, plus something like 50 instability for 25 turns. That would have the same effect but give players a bit of time to react.

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That would be a lot better. This instability per turn would be countered by a stability per turn right? So if I have a good stability, instead of gaining instability per turn after the mission I would lose instability, but not as fast as I would if there wasn't a instability penalty per turn. Is that so?


Anyways I think you should try doing this strategy in a test game Afforess. When I get the time I may try it, but I think you may see an incredibly unbalanced snowball situation with this strategy. I almost agree with Joseph about revolutions when I see things like that. When you taste the benefits of revolutions, you'll never want to stop doing it over and over again. It's so incredible that it lets you beat game settings you wouldn't normally do. The benefits are many, and keeping the rebellion is something easy for a human player. I just can't agree with Joseph because the concept of revolutions is amazing and I can't part with it anymore. But the mechanic is unbalanced and it's easy to take a good advantage from it. And it's the strongest advantage of any mechanic I've seen so far in my vast experience in LoR and brief experience in RAND (Free Troops that either you or the enemy may build including resource needing units, free 50% stationary spies, free Espionage Points, a discount on unit maintenance cost that decays by turn and replenishes with each revolution, free Counter-Espionage Mission turns, GGens, Settlers, from known techs of the enemy, city gifting, city flipping, workers and even extra duplicates of already owned national wonders*)

*Most of these were never tested on RAND, only on LoR, but maybe things haven't changed much I suppose

Afforess said:

Inflation is turned off, yes.

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What do you think of a global -10% maintenance from Federal Reserve? Too little or about right? Federal Reserve only works under Corporate or Regulated civics, so that is a small check.

Vokarya said:

What do you think of a global -10% maintenance from Federal Reserve? Too little or about right? Federal Reserve only works under Corporate or Regulated civics, so that is a small check.

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I think 10-15% is probably right. I would also give it between 5-10/gold per turn, the real federal reserve earns a profit of several billion every year.