Puppet City Focus Issue

[dragonpunch]

I think NOT being able to change the puppet city focus is a MAJOR issue in vanilla civ which should be fixed if possible. For example, I just conquered Mongolian capital early in the game, but it has only one citizen which is working a 2 gold desert tile. Improving it with a gold village won't give any food either. Unless a maritime CS gives food this puppet city is not gonna grow until annexed. I have seen this topic/problem being discussed elsewhere on this site as well.

Long time ago, Afforess had made a mod called Puppet City Visibilty (v 2) which allowed changing puppet city focus, and purchasing of units and buildings in puppet cities. It does not allow making units or buildings, and it does not allow individual citizen management either. I just tried this mod and it works fine, but it is definitely not compatible with CIVUP - at least not without merging the files. For a noob like me, merging is not easy. I don't know what to copy-paste-merge.

So the two part question is:
1. What do you guys think about this? Should CIVUP-VEM have the ability to allow changing of puppet city focus? I think it should be easy to do it.
2. Can anyone please help me to merge Puppet City Visibilty Mod with CIVUP-VEM? I was comparing files in WinMerge software but could not figure what to change/merge?

 

[Zaldron]

I always assumed that part of the puppet decision was that you couldn't control its focus.

 

[Thalassicus]

Buffing puppets would reduce the incentive to annex cities, and the puppet-annex choice currently seems balanced.

 

[dragonpunch]

I always assumed that part of the puppet decision was that you couldn't control its focus.

Making/purchasing units and buildings AND individual citizen allocation is not possible with a puppet city. But not being able to change puppet city governor focus is a serious detriment because it defaults to gold focus which often stops the puppet cities from growing or even gets them starving even though very good food tiles are available. There are times when there is only 1, 2 or 3 citizens, yet the city doesn't grow because of their gold focus. 50 turns could go by and they do not grow. That's why I think this is a gameplay bug in vanilla civ.

Changing the behaviour of AI may require extra modding tools while puppet city focus can be changed easily. Above I mentioned Puppet City Visibilty (v 2) which was updated to View Puppets (v 1) by Perkus. These mods can be looked into, merged to easily give the ability to change puppet city focus.

 

[pthmix]

Isn't that the purpose of puppets though? Providing a minimal bonus to the empire while also not increasing social policy cost and only slightly increasing unhappiness (which can usually be completly negated by social policies)?

I agree that it is annoying that some puppets starve on gold focus but you can deal with this problem by building villages/trading posts on grassland/plains. And the city will change to a high food tile if there aren't enough high gold tiles. So you can generally deal with these problems by building improvements where you want them and destroying those that you do not want.

 

[dragonpunch]

Isn't that the purpose of puppets though? Providing a minimal bonus to the empire while also not increasing social policy cost and only slightly increasing unhappiness (which can usually be completly negated by social policies)?

I agree that it is annoying that some puppets starve on gold focus but you can deal with this problem by building villages/trading posts on grassland/plains. And the city will change to a high food tile if there aren't enough high gold tiles. So you can generally deal with these problems by building improvements where you want them and destroying those that you do not want.

Yes, that's a good point, but I find it to be counter productive to not improve the tiles to their best. For example, grassland may be better suited for a farm OR what if I don't have grassland or river. Puppet cities have almost the same unhappiness as annexed, so they should provide quite a bit of benefits. I think -25% yields, not able to produce/purchase units, buildings, tiles, construct wonders is enough of a limit for a player. The only thing that is wanted is city focus change. I think this will be good for conquerer civs as well unless the AI defaults to gold focus.

EDIT:
I figured out how to enable the changing of city focus for puppet cites. It is very easy. No merging or anything like that required. For those who want to do it, just follow the following pointers.

1. There is a file called CityView.lua in C:\...\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Unofficial Patch and Vanilla Enhanced (v 151)\CiVUP_CivVUnofficialPatch\Core\Cities folder.

2. Search for viewingmode in this file. When the fourth time viewingmode appears, you will find this code in the file:

-- Viewing mode only
if (UI.IsCityScreenViewingMode()) then

-- City Cycling
Controls.PrevCityButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.NextCityButton:SetDisabled( true );

-- Governor
Controls.BalancedFocusButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.FoodFocusButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.ProductionFocusButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.GoldFocusButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.ResearchFocusButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.CultureFocusButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.GPFocusButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.AvoidGrowthButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.ResetButton:SetDisabled( true );

3. Now change true to false for the aspects you want to change. For example, to have the ability to change Puppet City focus, just change true to false as follows:

-- Viewing mode only
if (UI.IsCityScreenViewingMode()) then

-- City Cycling
Controls.PrevCityButton:SetDisabled( true );
Controls.NextCityButton:SetDisabled( true );

-- Governor
Controls.BalancedFocusButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.FoodFocusButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.ProductionFocusButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.GoldFocusButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.ResearchFocusButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.CultureFocusButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.GPFocusButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.AvoidGrowthButton:SetDisabled( false );
Controls.ResetButton:SetDisabled( true );

4. You can also change other things like purchase buildings/units/tiles. If anybody wants to know, just let me know. It is pretty simple because a noob like me could do it. But for now, I think having the ability to change city focus is enough.

Theoretically at least, it is logical to have control over puppets as to what focus is wanted and the ability to purchase units/buildings as long as there is gold to buy it because he who has the gold makes the rules. However, from the point of view of gameplay, it MAY or maynot be balanced. Still, the city focus should definitely be allowed to be changed because of the issues mentioned in posts above.

 

[Thalassicus]

If we do buff puppets, we need counterbalancing nerfs to puppets, so puppet-annex balance and conquest-economy balance don't get off kilter. What reductions would you suggest for puppet states?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

People seem to completely miss the point of the issue.

I don't think buying or "working" the cities is necessary, but "focusing" should be permitted because Gold is always the default focus (and when you annex, you have to manually change it to Default or any other) This is even worse with automated workers, who will spam Trading Posts all around, this therefore makes Puppets underdeveloped. Sure, gold is nice, but you're slowing yourself in techs and culture.

 

[dragonpunch]

Negatives of puppets:
1. -25% yields
2. Unhappiness is similar to regular/annexed cities and one can't build, buy, or use much of anything.
3. Gold Focus which is counter productive. Has issues like cities not growing at all if grassland or river is not available. One could wait 30-50 or more turns without ever having a citizen grow.

Positives:
1. Useful for strategic location or to capture resources.
2. Give small amount of gold and culture without increasing policy costs.

A buff to puppets would also need counterbalancing nerfs to puppets, so puppet-annex balance and conquest-economy balance don't get off kilter. What reductions would you suggest for puppet states?

You are right about the gameplay balance but when I see a 2 or 1 gold desert tile being worked in favour of a 4 or 5 food & production while the population is stuck at 1 or 2 or 3 for 30 turns and no sign of growing, it seems annoying and a bit unreal.

Yields, unhappiness, or other values can be tweaked. Yields can be further decreased maybe to minus 30-33%, unhappiness lowered slightly but it requires a bit more thought and testing. Gold focus is a definite issue I think.

Attention: The thing I posted above to change city focus doesn't work because on clicking next turn, puppet city defaults to the dreaded gold focus. So to escape from it, what I did is just changed the following word to get individual citizen management. Specialist slots don't work though.

Just change true to false in the cityview.lua file in C:\...\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Unofficial Patch and Vanilla Enhanced (v 151)\CiVUP_CivVUnofficialPatch\Core\Cities as follows:

function DoTestViewingModeOnly(controlTable)

-- Viewing mode only?
if ( UI.IsCityScreenViewingMode()) then
controlTable.PlotButtonImage:SetDisabled(true);
else
controlTable.PlotButtonImage:SetDisabled(false);
end

end

This will enable individual citizen management.

 

[Thalassicus]

Yields can be further decreased maybe to minus 30-33%, unhappiness lowered slightly

Could you describe the second part in more detail?

 

[Hund]

I know that posting something in 6 year old topic may be strange...

While I think it's a shame that puppets are only and always focused on gold, after reading the post and commentaries I realized that giving civs (player and AI alike) control over focusing may not be a good idea either. Focusing on gold makes some sense — puppeted city government corrupted and wanting money — but than we have Venice, of which I think as a conglomerate of somewhat free city states that are not always corrupted. I suggest random change of focusing in every puppet under every civ every X turns, maybe with the elections in city states.
Hope someone would see this...

 

[vyyt]

I know that posting something in 6 year old topic may be strange...

While I think it's a shame that puppets are only and always focused on gold, after reading the post and commentaries I realized that giving civs (player and AI alike) control over focusing may not be a good idea either. Focusing on gold makes some sense — puppeted city government corrupted and wanting money — but than we have Venice, of which I think as a conglomerate of somewhat free city states that are not always corrupted. I suggest random change of focusing in every puppet under every civ every X turns, maybe with the elections in city states.
Hope someone would see this...

This mod is not maintained by anyone anymore, so yes, posting here is strange

If you like this mod, I suggest trying out the Vox Populi, which has adopted some gameplay mechanics in its earliest stages of development. Its thread here is called Community Patch Project - its original name.