All new CS types, a rational probability?

Zyxpsilon

Zyxpsilon

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Right now, we have Cultural, Maritime & Militaristic.

With all the talk & comments about the "silly" Diplomatic Victory, lack of some Vassals system, strange principles of the Puppeting ruleset (etc) and if Firaxis designers_devs were to try introducing new features while performing a complete overhaul of the CS concept, what would You want for it?

I could think of a few probabilities;

-- Scientific (:c5science:), Industrial (:c5production:), Diplomatic (:c5influence:), Financial (:c5gold:), Entertainment (:c5happy:)... just brain-storming five extra types.

As to what their effects could become, it's all a matter of balancing (first, gameplay) everything into an alternate Diplo-Vic along with a bunch of considerations to the whole Human/AI interactivity that progressively leads to some if not many advantages.

Sure... we can already get supplemental food, spawned Units regularly, automatic percentages of Research, Friends & Allies - but what about hybrid (static, capped, growing by degrees, etc) support(s) and other enemy driven political (I'd risk the term Espionage for this!) elements?

Thoughts?
 
what would diplomatic do? And isn't a financial CS rather illogical when you pay money to gain influence on them?
 
I think if you expand the city-states, you also have to throw on new methods of generating influence on them. So I don't want a financial city-state to just be a backwards loan. But if you make city-state quests achievable, realistic, and useful, you can gain influence by simply doing things. So maybe you have a city-state give you a quest "open up the patronage tree for us" or "We desire your civilization to value honor more highly" (ie. adopt a social policy in honor), or even as simple as "build a naval unit" or "research to a certain era". If you give new quests, you can gain influence and/or ally with a city-state, and keep it, without even giving them any money.

Or, if you actually developed enough types of city-states, you could also give each city-state a secondary trait too. So you might have a "Financial, Militaristic" city-state, or a "Maritime, Scientific" one. Then you get multiple bonuses, and they start to distinguish themselves more.

It's really pretty unlimited. So obviously if they bring espionage back, you can have "diplomatic" city-states to generate espionage. Bring religion back and you can have "holy city states"/"religious" city-states. Heck, you can even bring in different genres of city-states. So maybe you have an "exploration" city-state, where influence is generated by the number of tiles you uncover. It can give bonuses like +1 sight, +1 movement, or anything else of that genre.

Personally, I'd like to see more variety for one, since that's brutally easy to do. I mean, how hard is to to make an "industrious" city-state, with the exact same bonuses as maritime except with hammers instead of food? But more, I'd like to see more interaction than just bribing them. As I've mentioned here, different quests. I'd like to see city-states actually do stuff on their own. So Tyre has a problem with Copenhagen? I'd like to see your influence with Tyre decrease each turn if you're friends or Allies with Copenhagen. And allow that to drop below 0 over time. So if you remain allied with Copenhagen, Tyre will simply refuse to be friends with you. Or let the city-states themselves declare war on each other.

Then you can even add on other ways to get influence. If I have 4 cotton in my empire, I should be able to gift one copy to the city state for a certain amount of influence. Really, I want the diplomatic window to be like an opponent. So I can denounce a city-state, if I'm at 0 or below, they will simply declare war on you, etc... If we make them dynamic, then we might not even have to reform the current diplomatic victory - if it actually takes effort to stay allied to city-states, then it's not just a question of maxing the patronage tree and heaping a load of cash on to all the city-states right before the vote.
 
Superb swoop over most of the issues, UWHabs.

I'm particularly interested by a system which adds much more variety to the whole gameplay context driven by CS. Why i recommended new types.

Indirectly, i'm just "weirdly but mildly freaked out" by the current Diplo-Victory and how simply purchasing CS votes makes it soooooo irrational.
In all fairness, the entire concept has huge potential if better designed with a number of your suggestions or anyone's insight on some other assets_principles worth integration.

To me, the entire Financial gameplay is an indirect CS tax-grab where not even a true Economic-Victory condition is possible. Once the CS infrastructure is somehow re-designed with extra-types, there's no limit to proper coordination with the "other" critical gameplay areas; Units, Quests, Influence, Puppets, etc.
I'll worry about balance later.

But - as an example only - if Monaco is currently sooooo culturally inclined that it provides us with SP points for the taking i don't see why it shouldn't become a perfectly suitable Casino fiscal paradise either. Many more abstract notions with a lot of similar (and variable) areas on Earth.
 
It seems the key here might be a) far greater variety of quests, and b) greater influence gained for those quests. Almost none of the quests are worth doing right now. Declare war on another CS? No thanks: has huge blowback. Create a great person? OK, but I have bigger reasons to do so. Find a natural wonder? Sure, but I was exploring anyway. In all of these cases the influence gained is dwarfed by the opportunity costs and by the influence to be gained by a cash gift.

I'd also like to see a focus on trade opened up: bilateral trade with CSs. IOW, they won't just give you resources in response to regularly renewed cash gift. How about you trade some resource of yours for some of theirs, and gain per-turn influence with them while the trade is in place? This relationship could cause influence to decrease more slowly, to enter a steady state, or to increase slowly over time. Militaristic states might use resources to make units they would be unable to otherwise, and use these units to wreak havoc on your enemies. Would also be a great way of burning off the huge number of useless resources one tends to have sitting around by the mid-game.

And how about replacing the Maritime CS with an "Agricultural" CS? Maritime states were more about trade than food production, so if they were changed to offer more profitable trade opportunities (say, offering up to 20 GPT for a luxury rather than the chintzy 10 GPT you get from AI civs), a player would have reason to protect them and otherwise cultivate relations.
 
civnoob13 said:
what would diplomatic do? And isn't a financial CS rather illogical when you pay money to gain influence on them?
Click to expand...

With "financial" you might be able to take large loans from them. 5000 gold loans in exchange for 55 turns of 100 GPT, a peace treaty and pact of protection from 3rd parties. Paying off your loan would generate influence, and reneging on the loan would cause a massive influence penalty. For this mechanic to be useful, the trade exploit (trading an AI civ a luxury in exchange for bulk gold, then pillaging your luxury or DoWing them) would need to be eliminated.

No idea how "diplomatic" might work in the game, though in RL there are states that act as mediators between states that normally don't speak directly. The Swiss do that for US to Cuba relations, and the Turks are developing a role as a mediator between the West and Iran.
 
Well I think the better thing would be varying the quest level.

And making some of the City states have "tastes" regarding Social Policies.

Like an influence bonus for Every Tradition policy you take...
another for every Commerce Policy you take...
another might have a penalty for Every Honor policy you take (pacifists)
Or you might lose influence faster or slower if you have Rationalism v. Piety or Autocracy v. Liberty+Freedom

With enough $ or Culture you could switch the effect of an allied CS so they saw things the way you did.
 
UWHabs said:
I think if you expand the city-states, you also have to throw on new methods of generating influence on them. So I don't want a financial city-state to just be a backwards loan. But if you make city-state quests achievable, realistic, and useful, you can gain influence by simply doing things. So maybe you have a city-state give you a quest "open up the patronage tree for us" or "We desire your civilization to value honor more highly" (ie. adopt a social policy in honor), or even as simple as "build a naval unit" or "research to a certain era". If you give new quests, you can gain influence and/or ally with a city-state, and keep it, without even giving them any money.

Or, if you actually developed enough types of city-states, you could also give each city-state a secondary trait too. So you might have a "Financial, Militaristic" city-state, or a "Maritime, Scientific" one. Then you get multiple bonuses, and they start to distinguish themselves more.

It's really pretty unlimited. So obviously if they bring espionage back, you can have "diplomatic" city-states to generate espionage. Bring religion back and you can have "holy city states"/"religious" city-states. Heck, you can even bring in different genres of city-states. So maybe you have an "exploration" city-state, where influence is generated by the number of tiles you uncover. It can give bonuses like +1 sight, +1 movement, or anything else of that genre.

Personally, I'd like to see more variety for one, since that's brutally easy to do. I mean, how hard is to to make an "industrious" city-state, with the exact same bonuses as maritime except with hammers instead of food? But more, I'd like to see more interaction than just bribing them. As I've mentioned here, different quests. I'd like to see city-states actually do stuff on their own. So Tyre has a problem with Copenhagen? I'd like to see your influence with Tyre decrease each turn if you're friends or Allies with Copenhagen. And allow that to drop below 0 over time. So if you remain allied with Copenhagen, Tyre will simply refuse to be friends with you. Or let the city-states themselves declare war on each other.

Then you can even add on other ways to get influence. If I have 4 cotton in my empire, I should be able to gift one copy to the city state for a certain amount of influence. Really, I want the diplomatic window to be like an opponent. So I can denounce a city-state, if I'm at 0 or below, they will simply declare war on you, etc... If we make them dynamic, then we might not even have to reform the current diplomatic victory - if it actually takes effort to stay allied to city-states, then it's not just a question of maxing the patronage tree and heaping a load of cash on to all the city-states right before the vote.
Click to expand...

This idea sounds good to begin with, but you would quickly find yourself being allies with city states simply by accident. I don't like that idea. There is a mod called 'city state diplomacy' which allows you to build diplomatic units to spread influence, and disallows you from buying them out. This system is great IMO.
 
i second the city state diplomacy mod. It makes it so you are most likely to ally with city states that are close to you which adds to realism and is more of a challenge to the gameplay where if you have no maritime citystates near you, than you cant buy one halfway accross the world. This would be even better with new types because you would have to addapt to your start location every game.
 
I posted this idea in another topic, but probably develop it a bit more:

Militaristic - Gives you land units, as in Vanilla
Cultured - Gives :c5culture: as in Vanilla
Maritime - Becomes merchantile, gives :c5gold: and coastal merchantile gift naval units, although not nearly as often as gift Military.
Agricultural - Gives :c5food: , trait replaces Maritime
Industrial - Gives :c5production: as mentioned in OP
Scientific - Gives :c5science: as mentioned in OP
Religious / Holy City - Spreads religion, gives :c5citystate: Piety (Icon as used in Indystone D.U.C.K.S. mod)

Also, city states should give :c5greatperson: points. So if you're allied with a Scientific city state, they give you great scientist points.

I love UWHabs' idea for exploration city states. They could give you sight / movement bonuses as mentioned, as well as Great Explorer points (New GP, although this one is like a better explorer, can defend and attack like scouts / explorers, and defend while embarked. Although, would take a lot of the Great Merchant names) and gift you Scouts, Explorers (New Unit) and Caravels.


Also, CS Type specific quests. So an Exploration city state might ask you to settle a new continent, while a Scientific CS could ask you to be the first to research a specific tech.
 
As soon as i have some solid results from the other Z-stuff (Eras-Center, Leopard, etc), i will possibly undertake this new CS concept in a formal MOD. Decision taken, no turning back!

There's too much potential in any of the above suggestions to simply ignore such gameplay features (Quests, Exploration, Variety, DiploVictory, etc). Anyone willing enough could also work on such "designs"... i even suspect, other modders are already trying to tackle their own model.

Wide open perspectives - as of now.
 
Scientific, Financial, Industrious, Agricultural CS would be great. I would certainly download a mod including them.

Btw, the bonus from Cultural CS could scale with time. 10 :c5culture:/turn is great in the early game but not so much in the late. Maybe this could be true for Scientific and Industrial CS too.
 
How aboout CS become active diplomatically? If you are close to a CS and you are aggressive, they ask for protection. If you pledge to protect them, you get a big bonus. Same with other Civs. They will actively seek protection (as a new quest) and whoever does it, will be commited for a longer time. Right now they are too easy to bribe. You start a war and bribe every CS neighboring you and the enemy and he is in trouble! Don't like that system very much...
 
They do actively seek protection in a way, but only after war starts. It would certainly be good if they were more proactive in this regard, although I'm not sure it would fit in with the other requests the CS makes; you would merely have to press a button to fulfil this one.
 
Mercantile: X :c5gold: per turn
Scientific: X :c5science: per turn
Industrial: X :c5production: per turn, distributes them the same way as Maritime
Creative: X% progress towards :c5greatperson: in every city
 
Mercantile would be bad because you'd essentially give gold in order to get gold back, which you can give for more gold (as an aside, what Civs would be mercantile, but not seafaring?). Actually, that question goes for all of them (I can think of some industrial, although I think Germany might have swallowed those cities). What historical city-states were especially scientific (I can think of maybe Syracuse, but just because of Archimedes) or creative (and how is creative different from cultured)?

More diversity would be nice (industrial being the most useful, scientific less so because of social policies).
 
I think there should be 5 types of city-states, one for each type of great person. Rather than paying cash to establish an alliance, a specific type of great person should be required, but I guess that would be too similar to Civ4 corporations.
 
Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas and Suggestions
 
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