Dynamic Collapses

Okay, I've been thinking about this lately when someone commented that it doesn't make sense to have a complete collapse just because you've won a war and have overextended into someone's core.

So what if the consequences of a collapse, or instability in general would depend on the actual cause of instability?

(Please note that I'm merely musing a bit here, and nothing of that might ever actually happen. Whether it does depends on the issues raised in this thread. So this is not a "planned feature".)

There are two main purposes of the stability mechanic as far as I see it:
- to motivate the player to expand historically (or at least prefer historical locations)
- to clear the map from civs that aren't supposed to survive

For the second case, we definitely still need the total collapse. For the first, we don't really. Therefore I would make the following change: total collapse, i.e. losing all units and cities, can only happen if the civ is already reduced to its core, completely pushed out of it or is past its historical "fall" date. In all other situations, the consequences depend on the factor that contributed most to the collapse (by whatever metric). This would give us different types of collapses, for instance:

Economic collapse (economic stability): towns and villages degrade, settled specialists disappear, economic buildings are destroyed, additional (maybe temporary) inflation.
Territorial collapse (expansion stability): you lose all cities outside of your historical area, cities outside of your core have a chance to secede, you lose the larger portion of your army.
Domestic collapse (cities + civic stability): change of civics based on time period, long period of anarchy, loss of most of your army.
Military collapse (losing a war): I could actually see this triggering a complete collapse.

The chances to suffer these collapses would be a bit higher individually. Overall stability would determine your chances to be checked for collapse, but only the individual stability in individual categories decides whether it actually happens.

I've got to say, I like where this is going. To me though, some of it seems odd, as the distinction in game between the various aspects of stability is strange. What I mean to say is that domestic collapse, as you propose, is affected by city stability. While this makes sense in real life, in game city stability is largely affected by core occupation, if I remember correctly, which would make more sense to have it affect the proposed Territorial collapse. In addition, I think there are several other aspects of stability that might need to be reworked.

To begin with, the permanent penalty for razing has long vexed me. I see how it could easily be a significant temporary issue for stability, perhaps for as long as 200 years, but I fail to see how razing a city in Mexico in 1435 to make way for another is still impacting stability in 1974. Wouldn't it remove large elements of the population that are unsympathetic to the civ anyway, and possibly pave the way to greater stability in the future? Thus, I propose that razing a city is a major negative penalty for twice the duration of a slave whip, or something similar, and then gradually dissipates over the course of the next 20 or so turns.

Finally, I have a question regarding the role of courthouses and similar buildings. As far as I understand, courthouses are a permanent +1 stability when built, which makes a fair amount of sense. Thus, why not make it so that there are other buildings that perform the same function, based on civic? I.e. bank for capitalism, jail for totalitarianism, castle for dynasticism, etc, but ensure that the penalty vanishes upon civic switch.

Rhye disliked the players avoiding stability penalties for destroying a civ by razing, so he just slapped a -2 penalty for razing and called it a day.

He'd be much better off making the plague not destroy units (what Leo already did) and making AI build units at 90-85% instead of 110%. That'd make it far more effective. But he thought that less AI units = faster loading time, something that is true only in a minor degree, afaik.

And I also like where this is going.

Also, an immediate request - losing a city due to being Unstable should not convert your units in the city to Independent ones, instead they should just be pushed out, and the indies be given free defenders, like with a city culture flipping and a civilization declaring independence. There's a reason civ4 programmers made this city flipping change from Civ3. The current way just adds more annoying micro.

I agree with you on the independent declaration, and think that it should be modified into a mini event for the first one or two times. One might offer money or concessions (of some kind, maybe civic change or agreement cancellation/declare war ) in exchange for keeping the city and gaining a temporary stability boost in order to "get affairs in order". Naturally, this would only be an option a limited number of times.

Let's see if there's historical precedent:

Economic collapse: Like the ex-Soviet countries in the early 90s
Territorial collapse: Spain and the colonial empire in the 1810s/20s
Domestic collapse: Uh... China in the century of humiliation, maybe? Kingdom of the Congo in the 1600s?
Military collapse: Austria-Hungary after the battle of the Piave river, the perfect example of this

I really like these ideas, especially military collapse. Perhaps it could be triggered after a particularly disastrous defeat? You'd need to be clearly losing a lot of units before that, but at some point, you lose too many and things fall apart. It's happened plenty of times in history, like at Manzikert or Sedan.

Okay, this is only tangentially related, but here it goes.

One change I would like to see to collapses is that they should result in many respawns immediately where the collapsing empire includes the core of another, currently non-existent state. E.g., if the Ottomans collapse and they controlled Greece and Arabia, Greece and Arabia should respawn immediately from the collapsing Ottoman Empire. If the Mongols collapse and they controlled China and Korea, China and Korea should respawn immediately. If the French collapse and they controlled Italy, Italy should respawn immediately. Etc.

That would help solve the problem of seas of independents when major empires collapse. It's also historical; when empires controlling many different cultures collapse, the constituent, repressed cultures tend to emerge immediately as separate nations.

Many civs have long periods in which they can't respawn, though. Seems to be an undocumented feature (Greece, for instance, can respawn only after 1820, personally I've changed it to 1790, since setting up the earliest date in this way will ensure that any actual respawn will be later). Some civs like the Maya can't respawn at all (though I guess this sort of qualifies historically).

Lone Wolf said:

Many civs have long periods in which they can't respawn, though. Seems to be an undocumented feature (Greece, for instance, can respawn only after 1820, personally I've changed it to 1790, since setting up the earliest date in this way will ensure that any actual respawn will be later). Some civs like the Maya can't respawn at all (though I guess this sort of qualifies historically).

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Well, it's fine to totally block respawns. I don't want the Byzantines or Babylon suddenly reappearing in the modern era. But all the potentially historical respawns should happen. (I also feel some of the limits, particularly Greece not respawning until the 1800s, are too restrictive--surely an independent Greece would have happened earlier if the Ottomans started falling apart earlier!)

Hightower said:

Well, it's fine to totally block respawns. I don't want the Byzantines or Babylon suddenly reappearing in the modern era. But all the potentially historical respawns should happen. (I also feel some of the limits, particularly Greece not respawning until the 1800s, are too restrictive--surely an independent Greece would have happened earlier if the Ottomans started falling apart earlier!)

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I think respawns should depend on conjoncture rather than pre-determined date; Your greek example is perfect. If the controlling power becomes unstable, any respawn can happen at any date, with a few exceptions (Byzantine being a good example.

Well I'm going to be pretty predictable here and restate my extreme dislike of using deterministic scripting to create rigid historical patterns rather than let the world play itself naturally.

Nothing crazy about respawned Babylon, Maya ect., there has been a desire for Assyrian independence for a long time for example. If RFC evolves into just emulating history as closely as possible with scripted collapse dates and blocked respawns, I and a few others would stop playing.

That's not to say provoking collapse shoudn't be slightler easier. I think trade, diplomacy and especially espionage should be much larger factors.

It's quite easy to lighten or release the blocking altogether, it's in consts.py under tResurrectionIntervals. There's some interesting undocumented stuff there.

Pavel Chichikov said:

Well I'm going to be pretty predictable here and restate my extreme dislike of using deterministic scripting to create rigid historical patterns rather than let the world play itself naturally.

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There is no "natural". What you're asking for is Civ4 BtS.

Oh very nice
But how the civcs will work with dynamic collapses?..Have a ideia?

what about revolutions? When people themselves overthrow their government.
Happens instead of collapse when you collapsing or maybe even if you unstable.
If using middleage civics and unstable moving to less despotic. If unstable and running capitalism, moving to state property, or anything else in any combinations, because world had too much of this to ignore it.
I mean the people's revolutions of any kind, when people acting vs own government. At cost of long anarchy, like 4-5 turns and maybe something else.
You should pay for instability, and not only by losing one city, which you can retake in any time, even right in turn, when it declaired independence...
it will be good reason to try to avoid instability (it will make pople to try to settle only historical areas etc)

While this would greatly enhance realism, IMO a much greater priority issue that must be dealt with first is:

Greatly reduce, or remove the amount of Culture in Independent cities (and surrounding tiles) after collapse.

Anyone who has played Japan or Mongolia for UHV knows this. Once China collapses you're left to deal with thousands of points of Independent Culture in previously Chinese cities. Even Culture Bombs do not help - you are pretty much left with a permanent -3 to -6 Culture Unhappiness as well as instability in these cities for the rest of the game. It gets even more ridiculous when the previously collapsed civ respawns. If China respawns and takes back some of those cities for example, it will be forced to deal with the Independent Culture in them.

This abominable monstrosity called Independent Culture needs to be removed first before any sophisticated collapse mechanism can become meaningful.

iOnlySignIn said:

Anyone who has played Japan or Mongolia for UHV knows this. Once China collapses you're left to deal with thousands of points of Independent Culture in previously Chinese cities. Even Culture Bombs do not help - you are pretty much left with a permanent -3 to -6 Culture Unhappiness as well as instability in these cities for the rest of the game. It gets even more ridiculous when the previously collapsed civ respawns. If China respawns and takes back some of those cities for example, it will be forced to deal with the Independent Culture in them.

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Doesn't it make sense when held by a foreign power? I just view it as chinese people not liking being ruled by mongols or japanese, which doesn't really seem that far-fetched. But yeah a respawned China should for sure absorb indie and barb culture.

Leoreth said:

There is no "natural". What you're asking for is Civ4 BtS.

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Which is essentially Joao domination, Shaka & Monty as neighbors and Mansa being a complete tech whore.

Pavel Chichikov said:

Nothing crazy about respawned Babylon, Maya ect., there has been a desire for Assyrian independence for a long time for example. If RFC evolves into just emulating history as closely as possible with scripted collapse dates and blocked respawns, I and a few others would stop playing.

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But RFC has always had these things (heavily delayed respawns, kind of scripted collapse dates). The world generated doesn't make sense without them.

Warning: Long Dawn gameplay design rant coming ahead.

How can you include, say, a Carthaginian-Celtic synthesis British people
if we have no reference point for them? Or Sinicized Indians or vice-versa, Indo-Aryanized Chinese? And so on and so forth.
You might say: "What does that have anything to do with Assyrians or Copts or whoever surviving and maintaining a great continuity that lasts for millenia?"

Butterflies.

If the conditions aren't met to create the cultures and civilizations in our world, then they just don't happen.
If the basis of DoC, which is the framework and general events of OTL don't happen,
and we let there be butterflies, then we have to come up with all the peoples and cultures that never were, which nobody here can even fathom.
If we let Babylon or Coptic Egypt survive as a rounded average for most games, with no stability maps,
letting them settle/conquer wherever they want, based on the premise of: "They could have..." then we can't include our pre-existing cultures as we know them.
Because if you want your stable, five-thousand millenia old Babylon to be a thing (with regular frequency)
well, we can't have a lot of things after that, and have that world make sense, within the context of that microcosm.
It wouldn't make sense, if that were the norm, for instance, for Turks to instantly appear in Anatolia after how history played out in that world.
Or perhaps there ever being a distinct Turkish culture for one reason or another.
In DoC, it would therefore make no sense for many peoples to occur because of butterflies.

DoC is a stove. It cooks conditions. They don't usually come out exactly the same, as prepared by different chefs,
but they come out based on the same recipe and the same conditions that cooked our world. Because we only have one recipe to go by.

This is not an alt-history simulator, despite having the leeway and capacity to create mutated versions of OTL (as indicated in many of the records here).

Yes, this does make the outcomes biased towards Western European civs.
Which at the same time, on the opposite side of the coin, I personally take issue with users complaining that there "aren't enough colonies",
because really, do you want to give the most overpowered civilizations in the game, EVEN more to work with?
But at the same time, we still have a healthy amount of variety.
Non-Euros such as the Ottomans, Chinese, Mongols, Tamils, Ethiopia can all be found in the Top 5 with a respectable amount of frequency.
Hell, I even saw Corea of all civilizations, get into the Top 5 in one game.
And of course, the player can drive a less-fortunate civilization to victory and supremacy as well, provided that they're good enough.

I do await the day when someone (or the Civilization games themselves) are good enough to truly be able to model sophisticated alternative history scenarios and seeds,
but in any case, I don't believe that is part of the mission of DoC.

iOnlySignIn said:

While this would greatly enhance realism, IMO a much greater priority issue that must be dealt with first is:

Greatly reduce, or remove the amount of Culture in Independent cities (and surrounding tiles) after collapse.

Anyone who has played Japan or Mongolia for UHV knows this. Once China collapses you're left to deal with thousands of points of Independent Culture in previously Chinese cities. Even Culture Bombs do not help - you are pretty much left with a permanent -3 to -6 Culture Unhappiness as well as instability in these cities for the rest of the game. It gets even more ridiculous when the previously collapsed civ respawns. If China respawns and takes back some of those cities for example, it will be forced to deal with the Independent Culture in them.

This abominable monstrosity called Independent Culture needs to be removed first before any sophisticated collapse mechanism can become meaningful.

Click to expand...

I agree that it should be tuned down. But most of all the insane barbarian culture happiness penalty should be removed completely. For example, as HRE Byzantium collapsed and Dyrrachium went barb and after I took it, I got three angry faces from barbarian culture.

Cosmos1985 said:

Doesn't it make sense when held by a foreign power? I just view it as chinese people not liking being ruled by mongols or japanese, which doesn't really seem that far-fetched.

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Makes sense?

If (as Japan or Mongolia) you take Shanghai 1 turn before China collapses and Guangzhou 2 turns after, Shanghai will be 100% your Culture and have no unhappiness or instability, whereas Guangzhou will have some 80% Independent Culture and -5 unhappiness.

Similarly, as Prussia if you take Paris, and then France collapses making Bordeaux Independent, and then you take Bordeaux, Paris will be nearly 100% Prussian Culture whereas Bordeaux will be like 70% to 80% Independent.

Because the cities of Guangzhou and Bordeaux are well known for their independent spirit whereas the peoples of Shanghai and Paris are infamously traitorous collaborationists. Everyone knows that, right? Sounds perfectly reasonable, right?

I think the different types of collapse is nice, but that's just me.