2 minor/similar ideas.

[Prodigyx732]

-I think it would be cool to be able buy a unit, but pay for it on a per turn basis. As an example, say a warrior cost 100g upfront, so normally that would be 10g each turn for 10 turns. However, because you get the warrior early (because you've yet to pay full amount), you have to pay 10% interest. So that would be 11g per turn + maintenance cost of course. This would be good for say, your town get's hit by a couple barbarian's, and you have no units around to defend and you don't enough have to pay the full amount for a new unit.
-I think it provides a risk vs reward mechanic to a certain extent. If the unit dies before the 10 turns is up, you will still have to pay the rest of the gold (so be careful). This function would be to counter just deleting the unit after his usefulness is outlived (Would just be considered a mercenary otherwise) Also, you will be unable to upgrade/gift (ect) during those 10 turns.
-Now say if you can no longer pay for this unit because you reached 0 gold, I was thinking maybe the unit could be confiscated. Now whether this part is a good idea and whether you should have to finish paying for it is beyond my mental comprehension (for balance reasons of course)

Not good enough? I was actually thinking the same thing for city states. To pay on a per turn basis for influence rather then throwing 600 gold whenever you have the it. I think this would combat Civ's somehow getting a crazy amount of influence by turn 50. Of course during this process, you wouldn't lose influence, so it won't come cheap. This would scale the same way opportunities do, depends what turn you are on. I think that's how opportunities scale anyway.

Feel free to shoot down my idea's, call them stupid and unintelligent ect.. Sound's good on paper

 

[albie_123]

The first idea I'm not so sure about, but the second, regarding City-States, is actually a very clever idea, and one that didn't occur to me. I've always disliked the 'give lump of gold = best friends' politics of city states, hence why I play with the City-State Diplomacy Mod, which I think improves the game incredible amounts.

A per-turn bonus would mean that being lasting friends is more important (An idea that Thal, I think, has mentioned as a long-term goal) - at the moment, you could be at war one turn, and allies the next. It's not only unrealistic, but bad for gameplay.

And don't have that attitude! You'd be hard-pressed to find a more reasonable and open-minded modding community than here.

 

[Dunkah]

I think the city state idea is a good one also.

Anything to try and keep them from acting eradic.

Although I kind of like it when they pile on DOW's. Mkaes it easier to conquer a bunch of them at once.

 

[albie_123]

The only thing I'm wary of here is the response in Dunkah's signature

 

[Prodigyx732]

Yeah I can understand people not being in favor of my first idea. It has it's flaws and really won't add much to the game and it doesn't fix anything because their isn't much to fix in that regard. Though as a separate idea I actually like the idea of mercenaries. Like maybe barbarians actually be a major global wide civilization but are separated in tribes that can become your ally kinda like in the past Civ games granted I never actually played them besides the demo. Then you can hire mercenaries from them. Maybe in a future expansion or something

Originally, I would of said city-states could have this function, but the idea of a being able to give a city state a unit (a big part in how you obtain influence) and hire mercenaries doesn't sit right with me.

Now to the main topic. I think the second idea would serve better as a replacement rather then an extra function cause then it really won't rid of the AI problem. That isn't the only reason though, it's just a better way of getting influence all around for both the AI, and the player. Adds a bit more depth as well which I'm always for.

I have two different ways on how to implement it. Keep the 3 options system.
Example: 5g PT (per turn) for 1 influence, 9g PT for 2 influence, and 12g PT for 3 influence. However this would be harder to scale if say, you did a 2% increase per turn, so at turn 20 it would be 6g PT for 1 influence, but would be 10g PT for 2 influence. This wouldn't scale all that well if you did it by percentage unless gold income was increase 10 fold. Of course the other way would just be at like turn 50, increase the cost by 2x. This has it's minor flaws as well I'm sure you can imagine.

The other way that would be harder to code is too add a scrolling system.
Example: You can use unlimited amount of gold (unless hard coded) where you increase it by intervals. For every 5g you increase it you get 1 more influence per turn. So you can offer 100g+ for 20 influence per turn. Maybe you would eventually get a discount the more you offer. However, I can only imagine this would only bring the AI problem back so maybe this is a bad one.

 

[Thalassicus]

Influence per turn is possible if we feel there's a way we could use it to enhance the game. On a related note, something I'd really like is for citystate diplomatic votes to accumulate over time, instead of an all-or-nothing thing done at the end of the game. It would reward long term alliances rather than last minute hoarding.

 

[albie_123]

Wouldn't per-turn bonuses do that anyway?

If you can only accumulate influence slowly over the course of many turns, you would have to make sure to do it early, lest end up in a position where it is simply impossible to gain enough influence at the last minute.

 

[wobuffet]

I think one easy way to improve the City-State Influence system would be to limit gifts to one gift per 10 turns ("You have given Gold to Ragusa recently! You can give another gift in 7 turns.") – if this is too restrictive, perhaps 1000 total per 10 turns.

Another improvement (probably infeasible without core access/DLL) could be to make Alliance only take effect after a turn, to prevent "shovel 2000 into Vienna, then declare war on the just-displaced Ally" stratagems.


I actually had a somewhat involved plan for continuous City-State influence levels in this thread about half a year ago. The idea is that City-States are relatively cheap to keep as Allies if you're unchallenged, but if a rival Civ starts to give gold per turn (one of three era-dependent levels) to your Ally, you must match it or be caught up to or displaced.

 

[albie_123]

I actually had a somewhat involved plan for continuous City-State influence levels in this thread about half a year ago. The idea is that City-States are relatively cheap to keep as Allies if you're unchallenged, but if a rival Civ starts to give gold per turn (one of three era-dependent levels) to your Ally, you must match it or be caught up to or displaced.

The ideas in this thread are very, very good.

 

[Prodigyx732]

Well I know the quest system is to be enhanced in G&K but the other 2 options of how you obtain influence, seem very.. "dumbed down" throwing away gold and giving units away are so bland.. letting city-states hire units from my Civ to protect from barbarian's invasion seem so much, more.. clever and realistic. Even that could be improved though. I think city-states have alot more potential then firaxis want's to give them credit for. I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling here.

 

[Seek]

The ideas in this thread are very, very good.

+1!

wobuffet - for flavor you could call the initial bulk gift "establishing an embassy"