Gort
Emperor
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2010
- Messages
- 1,518
After playing a bunch of BNW, I've noticed that Freedom's "Treaty Organisation" tenet is very powerful. By switching your trade-routes to city-states, you can be gaining a total of 32 influence with city-states per turn. (8 trade routes, 4 influence each)
The effect tends to be that a human player going Freedom is on a timer before they win a Diplomatic victory. You'd need a lot of gold income to equal 32 influence per turn, and the Freedom player will have his own gold income as well.
I have noticed while following this strategy that you get occasional AIs that go Autocracy, and take the "Gunboat Diplomacy" tenet, which gives them 6 influence per turn with any city-state they can bully. A high-difficulty lategame AI will have an enormous carpet of units in their territory, so will be basically using this every turn on any nearby city states, which is often three or four. As a result, these city-states end up so influenced by the Autocratic AI that they're basically irrecoverable - the AI has hundreds upon hundreds of influence with the city-state, so much that your coup chances are zero and it would cost thousands of gold to match their influence, and they'd just get more.
So far so good - Freedom has a wide-ranging but less powerful effect, and Autocracy has a more powerful localised effect.
The problem comes when, as others have noticed, lots of the AI go Order. Order gets nothing like these tenets to give it free influence. It only takes a Freedom player 15 turns to go from zero to allied with a city state, and an Autocracy player can do it in 10, and the result is a walkover diplomatic victory.
I'd like to see Order given something similar to these tenets - after all, early Communist theory emphasised a global revolution, and the Communist International (Comintern) was set up to achieve it. Perhaps a tenet called "Political Infiltration" which gave you influence per turn in a city state you have a spy in? Put it as a rank 3 tenet so it's balanced with Autocracy and Freedom's equivalents.
The next question would be - how much influence should it give per turn? Autocracy's tenet is hard to set up - you have to get a bunch of units to the city-state and keep them there. Freedom's is easier - you just need a trade route. However, it is vulnerable to attack in wartime. Since spies can't be stopped, but are generally less numerous than trade routes, a value of 4 or 5 influence per turn would be best?
I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts - particularly on which level 3 Order tenet it might replace, or on why this is all a terrible idea
The effect tends to be that a human player going Freedom is on a timer before they win a Diplomatic victory. You'd need a lot of gold income to equal 32 influence per turn, and the Freedom player will have his own gold income as well.
I have noticed while following this strategy that you get occasional AIs that go Autocracy, and take the "Gunboat Diplomacy" tenet, which gives them 6 influence per turn with any city-state they can bully. A high-difficulty lategame AI will have an enormous carpet of units in their territory, so will be basically using this every turn on any nearby city states, which is often three or four. As a result, these city-states end up so influenced by the Autocratic AI that they're basically irrecoverable - the AI has hundreds upon hundreds of influence with the city-state, so much that your coup chances are zero and it would cost thousands of gold to match their influence, and they'd just get more.
So far so good - Freedom has a wide-ranging but less powerful effect, and Autocracy has a more powerful localised effect.
The problem comes when, as others have noticed, lots of the AI go Order. Order gets nothing like these tenets to give it free influence. It only takes a Freedom player 15 turns to go from zero to allied with a city state, and an Autocracy player can do it in 10, and the result is a walkover diplomatic victory.
I'd like to see Order given something similar to these tenets - after all, early Communist theory emphasised a global revolution, and the Communist International (Comintern) was set up to achieve it. Perhaps a tenet called "Political Infiltration" which gave you influence per turn in a city state you have a spy in? Put it as a rank 3 tenet so it's balanced with Autocracy and Freedom's equivalents.
The next question would be - how much influence should it give per turn? Autocracy's tenet is hard to set up - you have to get a bunch of units to the city-state and keep them there. Freedom's is easier - you just need a trade route. However, it is vulnerable to attack in wartime. Since spies can't be stopped, but are generally less numerous than trade routes, a value of 4 or 5 influence per turn would be best?
I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts - particularly on which level 3 Order tenet it might replace, or on why this is all a terrible idea
