Eucalyptus
Warlord
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2006
- Messages
- 158
HR 1.21.1: I played a Huge Ancient Odyssey Noble game on a Tectonics map as Tiglathpileser of Assyria (Industrious, Tactical) to see how the Dissent mechanic worked. By 1488, the Assyrians had reached the Industrial Era and were teching Electricity. They had some 40 cities, and had never had a Civil War.
I disabled all the silly victory conditions (leaving Conquest, Domination and Time), so the strategy was that the empire must be as large and powerful as possible, and vassalise its surviving competitors as early as possible, whilst not splitting up via civil wars. The easy difficulty level (Noble on a large shared continent) meant that the Dissent mechanic could be tested in an otherwise optimal environment, as it ensured access to many resources and pretty much guaranteed being able to get any desired early Wonders. That is, more difficult situations would lead to smaller empires.
Practices
Offsetting Dissent involved the following practices.
1. Gain access to all known Health and Happiness resources, by trade if necessary. Previous to HR 1.21, having surplus Happiness and Health was good insurance for future expansion but with Dissent it takes on a value of its own. It may be judicious to trade for multiple copies of a resource as insurance against the loss of a single source.
2. All cities should build all available culture buildings to maximise culture, meaning that Stonehenge is an even greater investment than it ever was. It may occasionally be judicious to spend gold on Culture.
3. The state should have a state religion, and this religion should be present in all cities. The presence of alien religions in a city substantially increases its Dissent and, once present, they cannot be removed for centuries (via Inquisitions). To offset the chance of their arrival at all in new cities, it is important to actively spread the state religion to new cities as soon as possible. This makes the use of the Theocracy civic important, as it allows Missionaries. Not only that, but Theocracy is Dissent-cheaper than the other early favourite, Monarchy. So, tech Divination early, and ideally have Missionaries accompany all settlers and `conquistadors'. Unfortunately, the usual-favourite early religion civic Orthodoxy is not a cheap-Dissent civic, so the big civ will generally be running Paganism.
4. Keep a close eye on the total civics-based Dissent with each new city. Cities get an age-based discount on their Dissent. Discount the discount when thinking of their Dissent.
Strategy
The game plan followed a Dissent-modification of a probably familiar strategy.
Phase 1 (Ancient Era): The empire expands rapidly, generally maintaining the lowest Dissent civics until reaching an initial Dissent-capped size. It is very important to not overexpand: Once Dissent begins, there is generally no way to stop it and a resultant descent into Civil War. Early expansion is Dissent-safer by settlement than conquest. An army of conquest may be necessary to consume or eradicate neighbours that are too close, but the resultant captured cities may have alien religions which will become a Dissent-pain in the longer term. Furthermore, vassal states are not possible in this era.
Tech to Calendar and revolt to Agrarianism, then to Property and revolt to Monarchy and build Stonehenge in the capital. Then, focus on training Settlers and Workers. Also build in the capital whatever other Wonders are possible, saving all the resultant Great People except for a Shrine-building Great Prophet. The first cities need, more than ever, to be placed to claim in their fat crosses as many different Happiness and Health resources as possible (whilst not forgetting the Strategic resources!), and Workers (maintain 2-3 per city) should prioritise hooking these up.
Run Agrarianism and not the Dissent-expensive Slavery civic! Yes, whipping the population down will temporarily lead to less Dissent because the resultant lower population will have increased Happiness and Health (which is a cruel but historically-valid irony). However, the resultant smaller cities will impair the benefits of the Great Golden Age of Phase 3.
In my test game, at the end of Phase 1, the Assyrian empire reached its initial Dissent cap at some 15-20 cities in about the year 350 whilst running the Dissent-cheapest then-available civics Theocracy, Tradition, Agrarianism, Reciprocity, Militia and Paganism. Its huge military had assimilated one neighbour (the Koreans) and defeated an assault by another (the Sumerians) who in Phase 3 later voluntarily became the Assyrians' first Vassal. The remaining civ on the continent was the (weak) Mongolian civ. However, the Assyrian army was compelled to glare across the Mongolian borders for the duration of Phase 2. It was frustrating to not be able to assimilate weak neighbours, or to send Settlers to colonise unused land. Whilst the Assyrians could have continued to conquer for the plunder, whilst razing all cities, they resented losing all that potential Assyrian population and cities full of useful buildings. Should they have instead practiced more realpolitik and emptied the Mongolian lands for later settlement by Assyrian settlers?
Phase 2 (Classical Era): This is a Dissent-enforced hiatus. Do not expand! Tech to Aesthetics, and build the Mausoleum of Maussollos. Whilst building it, tech to Law and build Jails everywhere (needed for later Constabularies).
Phase 3 (Medieval and Renaissance Eras): This phase is one long Golden Age of massive expansion by ruthless conquest and settlement to fill up all remaining accessible land.
As soon as the Mausoleum of Maussollos is completed, run the old `Medieval Great Golden Age Rort': Chain 4-6 expanded Golden Ages together using a total of 6 or 10 (saved and generated) Great People, the Taj Mahal, and possibly the Unique Wonder. At Odyssey speed, 5 chained expanded Golden Ages constitute a Dissent-free, Anarchy-free, 180-turn Great Golden Age. (Of course, being Humane would make this rort even more rewarding!)
The important non-military techs could have following order.
1. Politics, to build spies to steal tech from competitors (do fortified spies in our own cities help thwart espionage missions against us?)
2. Land Tenure, to enable Vassals
3. Compass, to build Caravels to scout the rest of the planet for settlement sites, collect (almost all of the!) Goody Islands, and ferry Scouts, Spies and Missionaries
4. Dogma, to run Fundamentalism, and build Inquisitors to purge our cities of alien religions
5. Constitution, to build Constabularies, the first Dissent-reducing buildings (in all cities)
6. Humanism, to build the Taj Mahal (so, we must be the first to tech Humanism)
7. Charter, to build Galleons, and Privateers, the latter to systematically weaken all competing navies (and build up our Great General points) and for Blockades --- settle Privateers on islands along competitors' coasts (in trios, 2 promoted for strength, 1 for healing) optimally aligned to Blocade more than 1 city if possible, until the enemy has Frigates (watch them tech Optics)
Switch to more powerful civics as they become available:
1. Run Theocracy, training as many Missionaries as possible, until the building of Monasteries (requires Theology) and later revolt to Aristocracy (requires Nobility) for hammers via trade routes.
2. Run Proclamation (lower maintenance costs) and possibly Codification (tech Constitution) if the empire has many cottages.
3. Run Agrarianism. By not using Slavery and whipping, the larger populations of all cities get more benefit from the extra production and commerce.
4. Run Professionalism (tech Artisanry) and then Free Market (tech Economics, if possible)
5. Run Warrior Code (requires Chivalry) and later Standing Army (Logistics).
6. Run Orthodoxy and then Fundamentalism
After the GGA, the civ will be far too large to remain stable, so, one turn before the GGA ends, it must divest itself of all its foreign colonies and switch to the lowest-Dissent civics available.
In my test game, at the end of Phase 3, the Assyrian empire had consumed the Mongolians, so shared a large continent with only one Friendly neighbour (the technology-stealing vassal Sumerians!). Furthermore, it had colonised almost all of the land on the surrounding smaller islands and continents. It consisted of about 80 cities, of which some 40 were on the main continent. This situation worked out well. All the continental cities had Constabularies, and the increased culture meant that the civ could actually cope with civic-based Dissent of the 40 cities with minimal-Dissent then-available civics. To ensure its stability, just before the end of the GGA, the Assyrian empire liberated to Vassal status some 40 cities of its offshore colonies, which generated some 10 vassals. An unpleasant side effect of the vassalization was that some vassals were born with Unhappy and Unhealthy cities. The imperial civilization wasn't able to grant them multiple copies of needed resources, so their cities shrank. (Worse: It may also be possible to create vassals that are inherently unstable at birth.)
Phase 4 (Industrial Era and beyond): During this phase, the empire should not expand, but instead aim to systematically vassalise its competitors via the old `hostage capital' strategy: Conduct a quick war aimed at conquering the capital city and then returning it after Capitulation. At the same time, the civ should improve its offset of Dissent via buildings so as to be able to safely run Dissent-expensive but otherwise more profitable civics. Settle any remaining isolated unpopulated pieces of land and donate them to existing vassals. Caveats: Such cities may not always find takers, single-city islands can't by themselves become vassals, and there is a hard limit to the total number of civilizations in a game (18 unless messed with by using a custom DLL). A Dissent-related problem in this phase is that the polluting buildings of the Industrial Era can reduce Health to the point that unhealthiness seriously increases Dissent. From a strong leading position, the civ can put off industrialising for a while. The tech path could begin with the following.
1. Radio, to build Broadcast Towers (-25% Dissent) in all cities
2. Civil Rights and, one tech later, Labour Unions: With Civil Rights, revolt to the Equal Rights civic, which ensures a short Golden Age when a Great Person is born. Engineer a Great Person to appear after Labour Unions, then in the Anarchy-free Golden Age, revolt to Social Welfare to enable rushing production using Gold, and, as a bonus, reduce civics-based Dissent.
In my test game, sadly, during Phase 4, in 1488, after a Capitulation-Open Borders-Move Units sequence, the Assyrian empire had a sudden Collapse and I received the following window message.
Critique
Sources of Dissent and Stability
The HR1.21.1 version of Dissent makes gameplay a little flat. It imposes fairly hard limits on empire size in each era that don't (appear to) scale with map size. It makes rolling conquest impossible without complete extermination. This was visible in my test game, but the limitation would be more severe in other scenarios. It also makes critical the techs leading to Dissent-reducing buildings and strongly encourages intolerant mono-religious civilizations (which is possibly historically realistic?). It also means that a simple oversight by the player (I forgot to stop city growth, I missed the repercussions of a cessation of trade) could lead to an unstoppable spiral into Civil War, which isn't fun. The flatness arises because there is no flexible mechanism to reduce Dissent in the way that Happiness can be improved by spending on Culture.
Suggestions:
1. Let the size of the garrison reduce Dissent (say, 15 points per unit). This is realistic, and would for the first time motivate proper defence of interior cities (not just one Archer defending an inland capital for 5200 years!), and be nicely offset by unit maintenance costs. This could better be implemented universally than as part of a redesigned Authoritarianism, in my opinion.
2. Let Espionage spending mitigate Dissent in the way that Culture spending creates Happines (say 25 points per 10%). That (and the above) could be interpreted as government spying on its own population, that is, implementing a (partial) police state. At a massive cost to Research, this approach would come with the advantage of generating more espionage points, and might also motivate experimenting with an `espionage economy'.
3. Diversify the Dissent-reducing buildings. The Civilopedia states that Dissent can be reduced by building `such as' the Constabulary and Broadcast Tower. The Palace and Forbidden Palace also contribute, yes? These 4 are then actually the only Dissent-reducing buildings, yes? Can the Civilopedia be made more precise? (Also, how exactly does Dissent vary with difficulty level?) However, of the existing Dissent-modifying buildings, it is easy to argue that a Broadcast Tower could equally increase Dissent. Isn't it more logical to use security-related buildings to reduce Dissent? The obvious choice is the Security Bureau (say 25%). Other candidates are Jail and Courthouse (for say, perhaps 10% each?).
4. Make cities abandonable. This could be implemented as making the city a gift to the Barbarians (with population included, and not as razing).
Domestic Advisor
(Bug: Some cities appear twice in the Domestic Advisor list.)
The listing of the sources of stability (negative Dissent) by the Domestic Advisor is easy to understand. I don't understand the Modifiers or the calculation. Is it correct? The calculation is the following, I believe:
Dissent per turn = Civics * (age Modifier + building Modifiers + difficulty level Modifier) - Stabilisers
It would be nice if this could be spelled out (in the Civilopedia?), and the calculation made more transparent. Or have I missed an Ethnicity `proportion of culture owned by the civ' modifier?
Suggestion:
List the various Modifier percentages in separate columns. Provide a separate column containing the resultant Civics * Modifiers points so that the calculation of the difference is obvious.
Slavery
The HR1.21 implementation of Dissent has the side effect that it makes Slavery even less attractive to run (than, in particular, Agrarianism). There is really no reason to use it at all. Given the ubiquitous historical practice of Slavery, it would be nice to rebalance the civics to make it more attractive to run. To that end: Could the Dissent cost of Slavery be changed from High to Low? Here is a justification: Whilst slaves are by definition unhappy with their situation, they don't (usually, Spartacus!) have a political voice, whilst their owners, the citizens who benefit from slavery, do.
An underlying problem remains that almost all historical civilizations have actually continuously practiced both Agrarianism and Slavery. The two aren't really mutually exclusive, and worse, neither is really a valid civic `choice' because of their ubiquitousness. (An actual choice was, late in history, to permanently abolish slavery.) Perhaps the effects of both Agrarianism and Slavery should be permanently available (Masonry permits whipping until Equal Rights, Agriculture and Pastoralism always generate production bonuses) and their use as civics choices simply removed.
Religions and Inquisitions
Non-state religions in a city contribute considerably to its Dissent, motivating civs to be strongly mono-religious via Missionaries and Inquisitors. That is, Dissent finally provides a reason to not have all possible religions in every city (and thus build all possible Temples and Monasteries in every city) and provides a reason to use Inquisitors to purge non-state religions, and these are good things. However, the effect is so strong that there is now no reason to have more than one religion in a city. All civs should become mono-religious fundamentalists, which isn't historially accurate. To address this, perhaps the negative effects of alien religions could be weakened a little.
It is also cumbersome that training Inquisitors involves running the high-Dissent civic Fundamentalism --- so the civ can best do this in a Dissent-free Golden Age.
In my test game, I used Inquisitors for the first time ever! To my surprise, the first Inquisitor of the Anunnaki Assyrians wasn't Anunnaki and didn't actually have a religion! Instead, the non-religious Inquisitor standing in a city with 2 religions (Anunnaki and Buddhism) was offered an action-choice of 2 religion icons. It was not intuitive whether clicking the Buddhism icon would result in `purge Buddhism' or `preserve Buddhism, purge something else or everything else'. Hovering over the Inquisitor icon yielded only TXT_KEY_INQUISITION_HELP.
Experiment showed that the Buddhism icon indeed meant `purge Buddhism'. However, the first 8 inquisitions in a row failed (different cities), then the following 8 succeeded. I can't prove this, because their success or failure seems to be forgotten from the Event Log, at least when the game is reloaded.
So, a Fundamentalist civilization running a particular state religion trains a religionless Inquisitor, who some time later chooses a religion to attempt to expurgate from a given city. That can include the state religion! Although there isn't a 100% chance of success, the factors determining success seem opaque. It seems strange that there is a chance of failure at all. An inquisition is after all, a rigged court. Its verdicts are predetermined.
This can be done better: For instance, let there be one Inquisitor type per religion, as per Missionaries. A civilization can only train Inquisitors of their (current) state religion. An Inquisitor will then have an action-choice of religions to purge, a choice that does not include its own religion. I see no reason for any chance of failure. For realism, the civilization must still have the same state religion of the Inquisitor and be running Fundamentalism at the time the Inquisitor is used. If it changes or abandons its state religion, any Inquisitors could quietly disappear.
It would be nice if the hard limit of 3 Missionaries at any one time were scaled with map size. Ditto for Inquisitors.
I disabled all the silly victory conditions (leaving Conquest, Domination and Time), so the strategy was that the empire must be as large and powerful as possible, and vassalise its surviving competitors as early as possible, whilst not splitting up via civil wars. The easy difficulty level (Noble on a large shared continent) meant that the Dissent mechanic could be tested in an otherwise optimal environment, as it ensured access to many resources and pretty much guaranteed being able to get any desired early Wonders. That is, more difficult situations would lead to smaller empires.
Practices
Offsetting Dissent involved the following practices.
1. Gain access to all known Health and Happiness resources, by trade if necessary. Previous to HR 1.21, having surplus Happiness and Health was good insurance for future expansion but with Dissent it takes on a value of its own. It may be judicious to trade for multiple copies of a resource as insurance against the loss of a single source.
2. All cities should build all available culture buildings to maximise culture, meaning that Stonehenge is an even greater investment than it ever was. It may occasionally be judicious to spend gold on Culture.
3. The state should have a state religion, and this religion should be present in all cities. The presence of alien religions in a city substantially increases its Dissent and, once present, they cannot be removed for centuries (via Inquisitions). To offset the chance of their arrival at all in new cities, it is important to actively spread the state religion to new cities as soon as possible. This makes the use of the Theocracy civic important, as it allows Missionaries. Not only that, but Theocracy is Dissent-cheaper than the other early favourite, Monarchy. So, tech Divination early, and ideally have Missionaries accompany all settlers and `conquistadors'. Unfortunately, the usual-favourite early religion civic Orthodoxy is not a cheap-Dissent civic, so the big civ will generally be running Paganism.
4. Keep a close eye on the total civics-based Dissent with each new city. Cities get an age-based discount on their Dissent. Discount the discount when thinking of their Dissent.
Strategy
The game plan followed a Dissent-modification of a probably familiar strategy.
Phase 1 (Ancient Era): The empire expands rapidly, generally maintaining the lowest Dissent civics until reaching an initial Dissent-capped size. It is very important to not overexpand: Once Dissent begins, there is generally no way to stop it and a resultant descent into Civil War. Early expansion is Dissent-safer by settlement than conquest. An army of conquest may be necessary to consume or eradicate neighbours that are too close, but the resultant captured cities may have alien religions which will become a Dissent-pain in the longer term. Furthermore, vassal states are not possible in this era.
Tech to Calendar and revolt to Agrarianism, then to Property and revolt to Monarchy and build Stonehenge in the capital. Then, focus on training Settlers and Workers. Also build in the capital whatever other Wonders are possible, saving all the resultant Great People except for a Shrine-building Great Prophet. The first cities need, more than ever, to be placed to claim in their fat crosses as many different Happiness and Health resources as possible (whilst not forgetting the Strategic resources!), and Workers (maintain 2-3 per city) should prioritise hooking these up.
Run Agrarianism and not the Dissent-expensive Slavery civic! Yes, whipping the population down will temporarily lead to less Dissent because the resultant lower population will have increased Happiness and Health (which is a cruel but historically-valid irony). However, the resultant smaller cities will impair the benefits of the Great Golden Age of Phase 3.
In my test game, at the end of Phase 1, the Assyrian empire reached its initial Dissent cap at some 15-20 cities in about the year 350 whilst running the Dissent-cheapest then-available civics Theocracy, Tradition, Agrarianism, Reciprocity, Militia and Paganism. Its huge military had assimilated one neighbour (the Koreans) and defeated an assault by another (the Sumerians) who in Phase 3 later voluntarily became the Assyrians' first Vassal. The remaining civ on the continent was the (weak) Mongolian civ. However, the Assyrian army was compelled to glare across the Mongolian borders for the duration of Phase 2. It was frustrating to not be able to assimilate weak neighbours, or to send Settlers to colonise unused land. Whilst the Assyrians could have continued to conquer for the plunder, whilst razing all cities, they resented losing all that potential Assyrian population and cities full of useful buildings. Should they have instead practiced more realpolitik and emptied the Mongolian lands for later settlement by Assyrian settlers?
Phase 2 (Classical Era): This is a Dissent-enforced hiatus. Do not expand! Tech to Aesthetics, and build the Mausoleum of Maussollos. Whilst building it, tech to Law and build Jails everywhere (needed for later Constabularies).
Phase 3 (Medieval and Renaissance Eras): This phase is one long Golden Age of massive expansion by ruthless conquest and settlement to fill up all remaining accessible land.
As soon as the Mausoleum of Maussollos is completed, run the old `Medieval Great Golden Age Rort': Chain 4-6 expanded Golden Ages together using a total of 6 or 10 (saved and generated) Great People, the Taj Mahal, and possibly the Unique Wonder. At Odyssey speed, 5 chained expanded Golden Ages constitute a Dissent-free, Anarchy-free, 180-turn Great Golden Age. (Of course, being Humane would make this rort even more rewarding!)
The important non-military techs could have following order.
1. Politics, to build spies to steal tech from competitors (do fortified spies in our own cities help thwart espionage missions against us?)
2. Land Tenure, to enable Vassals
3. Compass, to build Caravels to scout the rest of the planet for settlement sites, collect (almost all of the!) Goody Islands, and ferry Scouts, Spies and Missionaries
4. Dogma, to run Fundamentalism, and build Inquisitors to purge our cities of alien religions
5. Constitution, to build Constabularies, the first Dissent-reducing buildings (in all cities)
6. Humanism, to build the Taj Mahal (so, we must be the first to tech Humanism)
7. Charter, to build Galleons, and Privateers, the latter to systematically weaken all competing navies (and build up our Great General points) and for Blockades --- settle Privateers on islands along competitors' coasts (in trios, 2 promoted for strength, 1 for healing) optimally aligned to Blocade more than 1 city if possible, until the enemy has Frigates (watch them tech Optics)
Switch to more powerful civics as they become available:
1. Run Theocracy, training as many Missionaries as possible, until the building of Monasteries (requires Theology) and later revolt to Aristocracy (requires Nobility) for hammers via trade routes.
2. Run Proclamation (lower maintenance costs) and possibly Codification (tech Constitution) if the empire has many cottages.
3. Run Agrarianism. By not using Slavery and whipping, the larger populations of all cities get more benefit from the extra production and commerce.
4. Run Professionalism (tech Artisanry) and then Free Market (tech Economics, if possible)
5. Run Warrior Code (requires Chivalry) and later Standing Army (Logistics).
6. Run Orthodoxy and then Fundamentalism
After the GGA, the civ will be far too large to remain stable, so, one turn before the GGA ends, it must divest itself of all its foreign colonies and switch to the lowest-Dissent civics available.
In my test game, at the end of Phase 3, the Assyrian empire had consumed the Mongolians, so shared a large continent with only one Friendly neighbour (the technology-stealing vassal Sumerians!). Furthermore, it had colonised almost all of the land on the surrounding smaller islands and continents. It consisted of about 80 cities, of which some 40 were on the main continent. This situation worked out well. All the continental cities had Constabularies, and the increased culture meant that the civ could actually cope with civic-based Dissent of the 40 cities with minimal-Dissent then-available civics. To ensure its stability, just before the end of the GGA, the Assyrian empire liberated to Vassal status some 40 cities of its offshore colonies, which generated some 10 vassals. An unpleasant side effect of the vassalization was that some vassals were born with Unhappy and Unhealthy cities. The imperial civilization wasn't able to grant them multiple copies of needed resources, so their cities shrank. (Worse: It may also be possible to create vassals that are inherently unstable at birth.)
Phase 4 (Industrial Era and beyond): During this phase, the empire should not expand, but instead aim to systematically vassalise its competitors via the old `hostage capital' strategy: Conduct a quick war aimed at conquering the capital city and then returning it after Capitulation. At the same time, the civ should improve its offset of Dissent via buildings so as to be able to safely run Dissent-expensive but otherwise more profitable civics. Settle any remaining isolated unpopulated pieces of land and donate them to existing vassals. Caveats: Such cities may not always find takers, single-city islands can't by themselves become vassals, and there is a hard limit to the total number of civilizations in a game (18 unless messed with by using a custom DLL). A Dissent-related problem in this phase is that the polluting buildings of the Industrial Era can reduce Health to the point that unhealthiness seriously increases Dissent. From a strong leading position, the civ can put off industrialising for a while. The tech path could begin with the following.
1. Radio, to build Broadcast Towers (-25% Dissent) in all cities
2. Civil Rights and, one tech later, Labour Unions: With Civil Rights, revolt to the Equal Rights civic, which ensures a short Golden Age when a Great Person is born. Engineer a Great Person to appear after Labour Unions, then in the Anarchy-free Golden Age, revolt to Social Welfare to enable rushing production using Gold, and, as a bonus, reduce civics-based Dissent.
In my test game, sadly, during Phase 4, in 1488, after a Capitulation-Open Borders-Move Units sequence, the Assyrian empire had a sudden Collapse and I received the following window message.
Code:
Python Exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "CvScreensInterface", line 774, in forceScreenRedraw
File "CvMainInterface", line 1058, in redraw
File "CvMainInterface", line 2455, in updateGameDataStrings
NameError: global name `localText' is not definedCritique
Sources of Dissent and Stability
The HR1.21.1 version of Dissent makes gameplay a little flat. It imposes fairly hard limits on empire size in each era that don't (appear to) scale with map size. It makes rolling conquest impossible without complete extermination. This was visible in my test game, but the limitation would be more severe in other scenarios. It also makes critical the techs leading to Dissent-reducing buildings and strongly encourages intolerant mono-religious civilizations (which is possibly historically realistic?). It also means that a simple oversight by the player (I forgot to stop city growth, I missed the repercussions of a cessation of trade) could lead to an unstoppable spiral into Civil War, which isn't fun. The flatness arises because there is no flexible mechanism to reduce Dissent in the way that Happiness can be improved by spending on Culture.
Suggestions:
1. Let the size of the garrison reduce Dissent (say, 15 points per unit). This is realistic, and would for the first time motivate proper defence of interior cities (not just one Archer defending an inland capital for 5200 years!), and be nicely offset by unit maintenance costs. This could better be implemented universally than as part of a redesigned Authoritarianism, in my opinion.
2. Let Espionage spending mitigate Dissent in the way that Culture spending creates Happines (say 25 points per 10%). That (and the above) could be interpreted as government spying on its own population, that is, implementing a (partial) police state. At a massive cost to Research, this approach would come with the advantage of generating more espionage points, and might also motivate experimenting with an `espionage economy'.
3. Diversify the Dissent-reducing buildings. The Civilopedia states that Dissent can be reduced by building `such as' the Constabulary and Broadcast Tower. The Palace and Forbidden Palace also contribute, yes? These 4 are then actually the only Dissent-reducing buildings, yes? Can the Civilopedia be made more precise? (Also, how exactly does Dissent vary with difficulty level?) However, of the existing Dissent-modifying buildings, it is easy to argue that a Broadcast Tower could equally increase Dissent. Isn't it more logical to use security-related buildings to reduce Dissent? The obvious choice is the Security Bureau (say 25%). Other candidates are Jail and Courthouse (for say, perhaps 10% each?).
4. Make cities abandonable. This could be implemented as making the city a gift to the Barbarians (with population included, and not as razing).
Domestic Advisor
(Bug: Some cities appear twice in the Domestic Advisor list.)
The listing of the sources of stability (negative Dissent) by the Domestic Advisor is easy to understand. I don't understand the Modifiers or the calculation. Is it correct? The calculation is the following, I believe:
Dissent per turn = Civics * (age Modifier + building Modifiers + difficulty level Modifier) - Stabilisers
It would be nice if this could be spelled out (in the Civilopedia?), and the calculation made more transparent. Or have I missed an Ethnicity `proportion of culture owned by the civ' modifier?
Suggestion:
List the various Modifier percentages in separate columns. Provide a separate column containing the resultant Civics * Modifiers points so that the calculation of the difference is obvious.
Slavery
The HR1.21 implementation of Dissent has the side effect that it makes Slavery even less attractive to run (than, in particular, Agrarianism). There is really no reason to use it at all. Given the ubiquitous historical practice of Slavery, it would be nice to rebalance the civics to make it more attractive to run. To that end: Could the Dissent cost of Slavery be changed from High to Low? Here is a justification: Whilst slaves are by definition unhappy with their situation, they don't (usually, Spartacus!) have a political voice, whilst their owners, the citizens who benefit from slavery, do.
An underlying problem remains that almost all historical civilizations have actually continuously practiced both Agrarianism and Slavery. The two aren't really mutually exclusive, and worse, neither is really a valid civic `choice' because of their ubiquitousness. (An actual choice was, late in history, to permanently abolish slavery.) Perhaps the effects of both Agrarianism and Slavery should be permanently available (Masonry permits whipping until Equal Rights, Agriculture and Pastoralism always generate production bonuses) and their use as civics choices simply removed.
Religions and Inquisitions
Non-state religions in a city contribute considerably to its Dissent, motivating civs to be strongly mono-religious via Missionaries and Inquisitors. That is, Dissent finally provides a reason to not have all possible religions in every city (and thus build all possible Temples and Monasteries in every city) and provides a reason to use Inquisitors to purge non-state religions, and these are good things. However, the effect is so strong that there is now no reason to have more than one religion in a city. All civs should become mono-religious fundamentalists, which isn't historially accurate. To address this, perhaps the negative effects of alien religions could be weakened a little.
It is also cumbersome that training Inquisitors involves running the high-Dissent civic Fundamentalism --- so the civ can best do this in a Dissent-free Golden Age.
In my test game, I used Inquisitors for the first time ever! To my surprise, the first Inquisitor of the Anunnaki Assyrians wasn't Anunnaki and didn't actually have a religion! Instead, the non-religious Inquisitor standing in a city with 2 religions (Anunnaki and Buddhism) was offered an action-choice of 2 religion icons. It was not intuitive whether clicking the Buddhism icon would result in `purge Buddhism' or `preserve Buddhism, purge something else or everything else'. Hovering over the Inquisitor icon yielded only TXT_KEY_INQUISITION_HELP.
Experiment showed that the Buddhism icon indeed meant `purge Buddhism'. However, the first 8 inquisitions in a row failed (different cities), then the following 8 succeeded. I can't prove this, because their success or failure seems to be forgotten from the Event Log, at least when the game is reloaded.
So, a Fundamentalist civilization running a particular state religion trains a religionless Inquisitor, who some time later chooses a religion to attempt to expurgate from a given city. That can include the state religion! Although there isn't a 100% chance of success, the factors determining success seem opaque. It seems strange that there is a chance of failure at all. An inquisition is after all, a rigged court. Its verdicts are predetermined.
This can be done better: For instance, let there be one Inquisitor type per religion, as per Missionaries. A civilization can only train Inquisitors of their (current) state religion. An Inquisitor will then have an action-choice of religions to purge, a choice that does not include its own religion. I see no reason for any chance of failure. For realism, the civilization must still have the same state religion of the Inquisitor and be running Fundamentalism at the time the Inquisitor is used. If it changes or abandons its state religion, any Inquisitors could quietly disappear.
It would be nice if the hard limit of 3 Missionaries at any one time were scaled with map size. Ditto for Inquisitors.
