Puppets

historix69

Emperor
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A puppet state is a metaphor of a state that is supposedly independent but is in fact dependent upon an outside power. (It is nominally sovereign but effectively controlled by a foreign or otherwise alien power.)

Puppets in Civ5 ...

... do provide strategical and luxury ressources.
... do provide un/happiness (depending on buildings, SP, religion, etc.)
... do not allow the player to limit/stop population growth to prevent unhappiness.
... do not build units.
... do not allow the player to choose which building to build next to counter unhappiness.
... do not allow to hurry buildings/units.
... focus on Gold production.
... have unchanged Gold production.
... have - 25% culture and -25% science production.
... do increase Tech costs.
... do not increase Social Policy costs.
... benefit from Social Policies.
... do not require specific building for national wonders.
... increase costs for national wonders.


If the player effectively controls the puppet, he should also be able to hurry/control production and control working population.

If the puppet is nominally sovereign, it is questionable why the puppet should contribute to the player's science and culture production and why the puppet should increase tech costs. Shouldn't the puppet actually continue to produce its own "sovereign" culture? And how can the puppet benefit from the player's social policies, if it is nominally sovereign and probably uses its original social system?

Due to nominally sovereignity the puppet should not effect the player's un/happiness.

The difference between puppet and annex in real world is that annexing allows to implement the social infrastructure (social policies) of the annexing state and so speed up development of the state.

So I think it might be more realistic if puppets ...

... are neutral in terms of un/happiness.
... allow the player to hurry buildings.
... do not produce science.
... do not increase Tech costs.
... do not produce culture.
... do not increase social policy costs.
... do not benefit from Social Policies.
... do not increase costs for national wonders.

If the puppet city is from a technological superior civ, it might give the player a bonus to research/adopt techs which are already known to the puppet.

Spoiler :

The British Empire with some historic Puppets ...



 
So you're telling us we could hurry the production of a building that gives us nothing? Sounds like a waste of gold, if you ask me.

In all honesty, you should think of game balance as well, not just because it's realistic. Why do people puppet cities? It's entirely because it's dependent on whether annexing or razing the city in question is better or not. If you decide not to raze, you would want your city to benefit you in some way. However, annexing comes with a price: the unhappiness caused from being an occupied city, in addition to regular problems on settling a new city.

The puppet option allows the player to mitigate some problems annexing a city might cause while still try to be beneficial to the empire as a whole. This is especially useful as a warmonger, because you will be conquering cities left or right, or be given a number of cities just to sue for peace. If puppeting them doesn't give you anything, you might as well just raze them.

Your proposal also screws Venice completely.
 
Puppets can be left as it is for a limited time when necessary. Once your empire has the necessary resources to provide the puppets with their demands then one can annex.
 
So you're telling us we could hurry the production of a building that gives us nothing?

You can hurry marketplace, bank for increasing Gold income, City Walls for defense, ...


If puppeting them doesn't give you anything ...

They still give you Gold each turn (with a positive income), resources, expand your Empire ...
 
So I think it might be more realistic if puppets ...

... are neutral in terms of un/happiness.
... allow the player to hurry buildings.
... do not produce science.
... do not increase Tech costs.
... do not produce culture.
... do not increase social policy costs.
... do not benefit from Social Policies.
... do not increase costs for national wonders.

If the puppet city is from a technological superior civ, it might give the player a bonus to research/adopt techs which are already known to the puppet.

1. Would be broken.
2. Venice can do this, it's a nice feature.
3. Better to burn it down instead as science is king in civ games.
4. We tried that in base civ5, it was broken.
5. See 3, if I have to choose between a city making no sci/cul or making my own city in its ashes, I am going to take the latter option every time.
6. see 7.
7. If puppets did as you are proposing then they would serve no point at all since gold can be obtained in many ways and the cost of taking over a city to puppet it when its only (remaining) benefit is gold, something a regular city can make anyway just makes the overall idea seem like a waste of time.
8. This already happens in the current game.

I don't mean to sound insulting but have you had time to play long enough to have a firm understanding of how puppeting actually works in Civ5? In general the plan is to annex a puppet city when you can deal with its unhappiness.

With the exception of Emperor difficulty (for various reasons) you almost never want to capture and keep a city.

You also mention realistic; Civ games are derived from a board game of the same name. The goal is never to be 'realistic' and always to be a game. Europa Universalis 'games' on the other hand... :mischief:
 
I just wondered why a puppet which the player cannot directly control in the game should choose to add to the player's science and culture production ...

I don't mean to sound insulting but have you had time to play long enough to have a firm understanding of how puppeting actually works in Civ5? In general the plan is to annex a puppet city when you can deal with its unhappiness.

I have around 2000 hours with Civ5 ... I know the mechanics ...
You can take a puppet and decide later if you want to raze, annex or gift the city to another civ.

Civ games are derived from a board game of the same name.

I play Civ since Civ 1 in early 1990s. I never played the original board game but I know that it focused on ancient mediterranean world.

The goal is never to be 'realistic' and always to be a game.

Is this your personal opinion or do you have a quote, e.g. from Sid Meier?

Civ games are turn based history games so you always have trade-offs ... however as I see it, the goal is to have an interesting game which is challenging and fun to play and which gives the player a historic feeling, teaches the player some basics about history and historic/realistic mechanisms while playing. The more consistent and realistic / historically accurate the game rules the better as long as they do not break the game/playability. ... adding realism sometimes means a lot of work on the game, the UI, the AI etc. to preserve playability and balance ...

Why do they put all this history information into the Civilopedia if history/realism is not important at all. If you emphasize GAME over realism so much, it might be better to play chess or other abstract strategy games which are not limited by the historic meaning of their elements, where you can have ideal, mathematically symmetric game rules.
 
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