City State Diplomacy Mod (Updated)

I'm more concearned with the "I give you a vote you give me a vote" mechanics and if it will be balanced against "I take your power and get a vote". It might be, but as you say - time will tell.
If there are no gamebreaking bugs in older .22 then I'll simply finish the games started on it.

LukeHro said:

You right actually, I could become friend. I just got BNW and play my first round without mods. I used your before the dlc. In my current run I'm ally with most states on continent without gifting a dime, yet one state between my cities didn't became friend from quests. But with your mod ,is true, no gifting and as far as I recall I'd use diplomats rather then the gifts mechanics.
Anyway if you like the idea...or maybe you can push it more: allow city connection only with allys or with the new mechanic.

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Sorry, I missed this post in my excitement over v22. I did some spelunking and the 'become friends' method is the only easy way to allow city connections; I'd have to rewrite that method for it to work with the Embassy, which would be very tricky. I think, for now, let's stick with the existing system; it does give an incentive for you to do diplomacy with minors, which feels right (or at least CSD appropriate) in my opinion.
G

I'm more concearned with the "I give you a vote you give me a vote" mechanics and if it will be balanced against "I take your power and get a vote". It might be, but as you say - time will tell.
If there are no gamebreaking bugs in older .22 then I'll simply finish the games started on it.

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Old v.22 should work (I've temporarily forgotten what I added since the last v22, but it wasn't much). The only bug I can think of off the top of my head is that, in old v.22, civs can gain, but not lose ideology-specific votes (i.e. if you conquer a capital, then lose it, you'll still retain the vote). I had to re-write that bit to refresh to a lower value. Small change, and specific to certain situations. I also did a lot of balance adjustments to the CSD resolutions to get them to fire at the right times, and in the right ways.

As far as the balance is concerned, I guess your equation depends on two things: both civs having the same ideology as well as the national wonder. If an Order Civ befriends a Freedom Civ, only the latter gets the vote. This gives the diplomatic advantage to the Freedom Civ (it is the easiest method of getting votes), but it also has the least reward (Order gets you a vote and an RA, Autocracy a vote and a Capital). The other attributes of the buildings are important as well - the bonuses of the Order and Autocracy wonders are stronger than the WTO (particularly the Order wonder). I still need to do more late-game balance testing, especially with regards to the Faith vote (in one game Arabia had 8 extra votes from faith!). Yeah, it is super-strong, but I kinda like it- gives religion a purpose beyond just the beliefs (how philosophical of me).
G

I will tell you how faith works soon - in one of my current games I play a diplomatic Poland-piety route with extra +30 to CS resting influence from faith, I earn about 110 faith per turn, currently in Renaissance and spam missionaries to take over CS. My friend plays cultured Arabia and we're near each other, so unless we kill each other before the game ends (we do not intent to) it may show finer points of faith abuse (if there are any). It's quite a fun game, because only 3 civs out of 7 on our continent still have their capitals, and two were eliminated by Medieval era. It might be random, but AI are extremely aggressive in that game.

In the other we're still crawling somewhere in classic, but we play it with another friend of ours, so it's hard to actually complete a game ;-) we'll probably be somewhere in Industrial when .23 comes out ;-P

I always wondered why the musician doesn't boost influence in a city-state

Ekmek said:

I always wondered why the musician doesn't boost influence in a city-state

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That's why I made the Great Diplomat – I didn't want to over-extend the Great Musician (they're pretty essential for Cultural Victories), but a high-powered diplomat was needed.

it may show finer points of faith abuse (if there are any)

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Sounds great. There's no hard cap on the number of votes that can be earned from the Grand Temple, but I think it is okay, as it scales with the size of a map fairly well. We'll see.

we'll probably be somewhere in Industrial when .23 comes out

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v23 is, actually, in the pipe! I was working on a new resolution, and some general diplomacy tweaks for v22 that I decided to push into v23, as I was having a hard time getting them to work correctly. I've got it working now (needed a day to let it percolate).

New Resolution: Just War – active resolution (available as soon as WC is founded) that greatly reduces the warmonger penalty from capturing cities and greatly increases the rate of decay of all players' warmonger scores.

This resolution should address one of the big complaints I see from many players - that warmonger penalties are too easy to get, and impossible to get rid of. This resolution gives warmongers with diplomatic power the ability to bring their scores down, and will let them wage war with a bit more diplomatic freedom.

The other major tweaks I'm working on also deal with the warmonger score, but they are core mechanic/resolution changes, not new resolutions:

- 'Embargo Player' is now 'Sanction Player,' and, in addition to the economic penalty, the warmonger penalty for capturing cities owned by the sanctioned player is halved. This also applies to 'Embargo City-State' - it is now Sanction City-States, and includes the same warmonger penalty reduction.

- Players that share religion care much less about each other's warmongering, unless they're fighting other civs that share the same religion. This just makes sense.

- The religious perk above also applies for ideologies – if two players share them, each cares less, unless you're fighting a player with the same ideology.

As it stands now, the resolution applies to capturing cities and when declaring war, whereas the perks only apply to capturing cities. Seem fair?

Thoughts?

G

Gazebo said:

v23 is, actually, in the pipe!

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whoward69 said:

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Yeah I know, I know. I'm just thinking two steps ahead! It'll be a while until I release v23, as the balance is a bit more delicate (I'm messing with core mechanics).

I think the name 'City-State Diplomacy' doesn't really apply to this mod anymore, as we've gone beyond that quite a bit! Perhaps Crazy Super Diplomacy?

I actually love the ideas of .23. Warmonger penalties were reduced because of the everexisting issue of simple conquest paths, but it became a tad overkill since the main issue ("Control every other capital city" instead of "Be the last controlling his own capital city") was resolved. Since the fall patch, many fixes to warmongering don't really fix anything - instead they repeatedly break it again, this time the other way around - overnerf so to speak. This caused many of the game's innate ways of keeping strong players in check to go haywire - multiple runaways were impossible to stop since at some moment in the game you had war with multiple countries and couldn't capture anything because of happiness (unless you had Pagodas + Temples provide 2 happiness) or warmonger (my personal record on a 12 civ huge map was to have war declared on me by 9 AIs simultaneously). That caused many issues - including the fact that we saw the king naked in case of culture and diplomacy - the other methods of aggression were simply not good enough to compensate. Right now we have alternatives, which is great. If warfare will join them - all the better.

You could rename CSD to "Gazebo's Awesome and Epic Diplomatic mod of Great Game Upgrade" with a secondary title of "Sid owes me one"; or simply - "How Civ V should have looked but didn't" Perhaps "Civ V+" or "Civ 5.5" so we do not have scope issues anymore ;p

Gazebo said:

I think the name 'City-State Diplomacy' doesn't really apply to this mod anymore, as we've gone beyond that quite a bit! Perhaps Crazy Super Diplomacy?

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THE Enhanced Diplomacy Mod?

Super Duper CiV?

The incredible Adventures of Gazebo and the Diplomacy League?

Try-Playing-without-me(after-you've-used-me) mod?

Off the top of my head....

Cheers
Argentino

Love the names – made me laugh out loud (my dog is staring at me confusedly).

I'm working from home today ('working'), so I'm letting the AI run through its paces and checking in on it from time-to-time. The new .23 warmonger changes seem to be working quite well – natural alliances are forming between players with the same faith (so long as you don't war with another player that has the same faith), and, in the late game, these friendships are enhanced (or strained) by your choice of ideology. In spite of near-constant warfare on the part of Attila in one game (two conquered capitals, one conquered CS, two conquered cities), he was still 'friendly' with two civs that he shared a faith and ideology with. The other civs hated him, but the fact that he still had friends is pretty neat.

I've expanded this mechanic to include a slight buff to warmonger penalties for players that are of a different faith/ideology (20% increase, roughly) – this accelerates tensions between civs of different faiths/cultures (a la Civ IV) and hardens alliances once one or more like-minded civs war with the other party.

I'm having a hard time getting the AI to keep the 'Just War' resolution in place - peaceful civs are often the strongest diplomatic civs, and they don't want 'Just War' in place. It makes sense, of course – why would they want to help warmongers – but it makes testing harder.

I've thought about adding in a 'reset warmonger to zero' function for a wonder or policy, but that feels gamey. It'd be the equivalent of mind-wiping another civ, which is...unique, to say the least. The 'Just War' decay increase wipes warmonger status off roughly 5x faster (you drop the lowest level of warmonger status to no status in around 40-50 turns), which I think functions as a better alternative to 'reset warmonger to zero.' Should this also be included as an effect of a wonder or policy? If so, where, and how?

G

Edit: Thanerion, did you see the PM I sent you?

That sounds really interesting - one thing I miss in Civ5 compared to Civ4 (and its implementation of religion) is the formation of "power blocks". I'd like to see that.

Regarding the mod rename... perhaps (City)State Diplomacy Mod? It's still all about state diplomacy!

Some feedback regarding the mod itself (only played one game with it, so they may be flukes):

• Overall, I like it. It certainly requires some initial investment to get it going, which feels a bit awkward, but that's probably just me not being used to it (i.e. the Scrivener's Office to gain access to paper - early game is quite busy, it's hard to find a good time for it).
• The Influence Boost quest is named weirdly for the ancient/classical era. Having a diplomatic congress feels too... modern.
• I'm not sure about the name of the AAC (Aerospace Advisory Council) either, it sounds like it should be a buff (I understand the reasoning, just on first glance it throws you off a bit).

Glad I could make you laugh, those were the joke names.

I still stand by the "Enhanced Diplomacy" name though, think about it!

Cheers

Anyone have a link to v21 accidentally updated to v22 without backing up and the link to the old ones only has v20

pterodactyl said:

Anyone have a link to v21 accidentally updated to v22 without backing up and the link to the old ones only has v20

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Sorry, here's the link!

CSD v21

Anyone having runtime errors after installing v22?
I keep having them, mid-game and when loading autosaves.
Clearing cache doesn't seem to work.

GemAye,

Could you give me more details? What size map, what turn exactly, etc.? There's definitely a bug that has slipped into the mod somewhere in the jump from v21-v22 that seems to skew a lot of the game's integers when loading a save. That may be what you are encountering.

I am going to diagnose and fix the bug as soon as possible.
Cheers,
G

Gazebo said:

I've thought about adding in a 'reset warmonger to zero' function for a wonder or policy, but that feels gamey. It'd be the equivalent of mind-wiping another civ, which is...unique, to say the least. The 'Just War' decay increase wipes warmonger status off roughly 5x faster (you drop the lowest level of warmonger status to no status in around 40-50 turns), which I think functions as a better alternative to 'reset warmonger to zero.' Should this also be included as an effect of a wonder or policy? If so, where, and how?

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Reset Warmonger to 0 should be included as a policy possible to take in every single ideology (1st or 2nd level, depending on effects) and should be called, depending on Ideology, either "New Constitution" (Freedom), along with a 30-turn happiness and commerce buff, "Perestroika" (Order), along with a 30-turn happiness and food buff or "Junta" (Autocracy), along with a 30-turn happiness and units-free-of-maintenance or simply "give me a few units", perhaps "temporary bonus vs rebels" too. These policies could also reduce civil unrest penalties for some time. A lack of "less than changing ideology, but I need to do something" policy is quite a serious design oversight from the creators. They shouldn't give much - but enough to try to get back in the game when you are seriously hammered by unrest, unhappiness, warmonger penalties etc. It could greatly aid AIs that are behind. If these policies would "turn off" science and great people point accumulation and golden age meter while they are in effect, they could be made even stronger - adding production, faith, culture, perhaps more for smaller empires (if there is a way to scale it to be stronger for weaker civs, don't know if there is something like this in the game code). They would provide an excelent way to "get back into the game", reducing the impact of a bad start for some AIs that start low and stay low for the rest of the game.
This would be even more awesome if, as I suspect, it will be hard for strong empires to always stay strong now that civil unrest seriously starts to have some real impact on the game.
This always baffled me - I understand that election (fake or not) stuff was ignored to simplify the game, but there should be a way of changing the government. That would mesh nicely with "warmonger to 0" or "insane reduction in warmonger" penalties. After the only diplomatic reset in the game, after ideology, it makes sense to make it possible to create a new one and start over ;-)

Edit: As a side note, penalty for changing ideologies is currently so bad that noone does it. I have seen AI do it a few times, but only after they were culturally dominated and completely torn apart by wars and rebels - I can't even remember when it was - last 7 or 8 games I finished had no swaps in them. If some culture was recovered on the swap, then it would seriously encourage "power blocks", but right now what goes stays and swaps are next to nonexistent.

Gazebo said:

GemAye,

Could you give me more details? What size map, what turn exactly, etc.? There's definitely a bug that has slipped into the mod somewhere in the jump from v21-v22 that seems to skew a lot of the game's integers when loading a save. That may be what you are encountering.

I am going to diagnose and fix the bug as soon as possible.
Cheers,
G

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All games with this error were new games after installing CSDmod v22.
Ingame the error occurs after completing a turn, when its the turn of one of the other civ's.
I sadly cannot say which civ's turn it is and if its always with the same civ when it happens.
Last few times when this happened ingame, it was "early" in the game.
Most recent autosave was at turn 130 750BC (does this make sense? the autosave is named AutoSave_0130 BC-0750).
Most recent old autosave in the map "prev" in autosaves is called 0ldAutoSave_0160 BC-0200 which might be turn 160 200BC?

The size of the autosave-files are always the same per game, last game autosaves are all at the size of 12.469 bytes.
Hence the problem of loading these saves as these are hardly a tenth of the size of a normal save.

Size map: huge (PerfectWorld3 mod)

Other mod's I play with besides CSDmod:
PerfectWorld3
Historical Religions (BNW or GK)
Hulfgars Modpack Industrial Edition for BNW ver7.2
InfoAddict
Krakatoa Fix

I always play these mod's and never had this problem before, except sometimes with PerfectWorld3 creating a faulty world which makes the game crash at the worldbuilding face when starting a new game.
But never during an existing game.

Expansions:
Brave New World
Gods and Kings

Scenario packs:
Denmark
Mongols, Genghis Khan
Conquest of the New World Deluxe Scenario
Spain, Isabella and Inca

Can't think of more info I could share at the moment.
I hope this helps.

Don't know if it helps, it might be Hulfgar's mod or some interaction between it and .22 CSD. If I remember correctly, it's even stated on the mod page that it might cause this (the reason I ignored it aside from stat bloat).

I checked it out, it's in the main post for the Hulfgars Modpack Industrial Edition for BNW ver7.2:

WARNING : There is a bug in the BNW Complete Edition version for now. Save Game may be corrupted and not usable. Advice : save often, check the size of the save game file : if it's 12ko it's corrupted and you need to restart the computer to get a chance to make valid save game. If it's bigger than 12 ko (usually over 500ko) then you can play further, just check the next save game.

Sorry for this but the bug may appear or not and I don't find the cause for now.

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You might want to disable Hulfgar's mod and check if the issue persists. I've got three hotseat games in .22 CSD currently - one is in early medival, one in late medieval and the other in late industrial and there were no issues.

I'm aware of that, that's why I'm using ver. 7 of Hulfgar's mod.
I should have mentioned that in my earlier post.

[edit]
Heh, which I did.
I believed the savegame issue was in version 8 of Hulfgar's mod.