[Vote] (5-22) Tribute Changes (Part 1: Adjustment Of Tribute Modifiers)

[Stalker0]

VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 22

This is part 1 of a two part series. The two proposals can be implemented seperately from each other, but both focus on the same concept.

Part 2 can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-adjustments-new-quest-yields-tribute.684427/


Proposal: The following modifiers to the Tribute "Bully Score" (which is the % of max tribute you gain from a CS) have been adjusted.

• "Has Friend" Penalty reduced from -5 per friend to 0 (REMOVED)
• "Has Ally" Penalty reduced from -50 to -15.
• "Has limited population" penalty reduced from -100 to 0 (REMOVED)
• "Using Heavy Tribute" penalty reduced from -15 to 0 (REMOVED)
• "Per Pledge of Protection" penalty increases from -10 per pledge to -15
• Penalty per influence above 0 reduced from -1 to 0 (REMOVED)

Unchanged Penalties (just for reference)

• Bullied this turn: impossible
• CS or bully doesn't have a capital: impossible
• Recently liberated: -100
• Recent tribute penalty
• Hostile Personality: -10
• Militaristic CS penality: -10

Rationale:

Currently tribute is in a sad state of affairs. The bonuses are very weak, and have horribly scaling into the mid game. Part of the problem is that there are a lot of penalties that can add up in a CS, making it extremely hard to get a high tribute % after the early part of the game.

• The has friend penalty is far too numerous, and doesn't thematically make sense (having friends is nice but they aren't going to defend you).
• A CS ally already improves the strength of CS, which improves its tribute resistance, so this penalty was weakened.
• The has limited population penalty creates weird scenarios where its better to wait for a CS to get a little stronger because I can then get more tribute. It delays tribute a bit too long.
• The Using Heavy penalty was arbitrary, as this is already handled by your threshold, and maxing to 100% is actually quite difficult.
• The pledge of protection thematically makes the most sense to improve tribute resistance, and so that is increased.

Overall this should allow a tributing player to get to higher thresholds without such a massive commitment. It also means tributing should be easy in the mid game as CS acquire more friends and allies, allowing it to remain a viable option for people who like that playstyle.

 

[Recursive]

@Stalker0 Current tribute modifiers:

CvMinorCivAI::CalculateBullyScore()

- Bullied the City-State already this turn: score is always -100 (impossible)
- City-State doesn't have a capital: score is always -100 (impossible)
- Bully doesn't have a capital: score is always -100 (impossible)

+ Overall Military Power
~ Add up the raw military power stat from all civs to get total military might; exclude civs with 0 cities
~ Modifier = (Bully's military power * 100 / total military might, rounded down) * 50 / 100, rounded down
~ Increase by 50% for Zulus

+ Military near City-State
~ City-State looks at "reachable plots" within 5 tiles of its capital
   Not totally sure how this works, but seems to exclude tiles that are impassable for the City-State's units AND aren't adjacent to the capital
~ For each plot, power of each unit from both the City-State and the bully are added up (embarked units count as half)
~ The City-State's capital's power is also added to their power
~ Calculate Local Power Ratio
~ If the bully's local power is greater, it's the square root of (10000 * bully power / City-State's power), rounded down
~ If the City-State's local power is greater, it's (100 * bully power / City-State's power), rounded down
~ Modifier = Local Power Ratio
~ Increase by 50% for Zulus

+ Policy Modifier for Bullying
~ Total War Tenet: +25% (multiplicative with Zulu modifier)

- Influence above Neutral threshold
~ -1 penalty for each Influence point above 0
~ Does not apply for players with the Tyranny tenet

- Recently liberated
~ If the City-State was liberated within the past 50 turns, add a -100 penalty

- Low population (Heavy Tribute only)
~ Add -100 if the City-State's capital's population is below 5

- Gave you tribute recently
~ Applies if (turn last bullied by this major + 30, scaling with gamespeed >= current game turn)
~ Penalty is (turn last bullied by this major + 30, scaling with gamespeed - current game turn) * -10

- Has Ally
~ Ignored by Zulus
~ No penalty for the bully being allied
~ Penalty of -50

- Has Pledges of Protection
~ Ignored by Zulus
~ No penalty for the bully having a pledge
~ Penalty of -10 per pledge

- Has Friends
~ Ignored by Zulus
~ No penalty for the bully being friends
~ Penalty of -5 per friend

- Giving Heavy Tribute (Heavy Tribute only)
~ Penalty of -15

- Hostile Personality
~ Penalty of -10 if the City-State is Hostile

- Militaristic
~ Penalty of -10 when bullying Militaristic City-States

Final score can't be above 100.

Current pledge modifier is -10 per pledge, not -15.

 

[azum4roll]

Aren't you going to remove penalty from having positive influence too?

 

[pineappledan]

This proposal has implications for Zulu and Siam. In their UAs, Siam doubles some of these bonuses and Zulu bypasses some of them. Do you propose anything change with those 2 civs?

 

[Stalker0]

This proposal has implications for Zulu and Siam. In their UAs, Siam doubles some of these bonuses and Zulu bypasses some of them. Do you propose anything change with those 2 civs?

As far as I can tell, Siam wouldn't be impacted by this (I don't see anything in their UA taht would be impacted).

Ultimately I wouldn't change anything for Zulus (they will normally get a big benefit from this change as they will be able to tribute more). The ally reduction is weaker but the pledge reduction stronger, so it somewhat washes out.

Aren't you going to remove penalty from having positive influence too?

Yes good point. Now that Recursive has given me the full list I'll just note everything for completeness.

 

[Stalker0]

Proposal edits: 7/4/2023 13:00 EST

• Corrected pledge of protection adjustment (as its currently -10 not -15).
• Updated language to clarify the exact amount of change.
• Added unchanged modifiers for reference
• Removed "influence above 0" penalty.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

One thing that has annoyed about going for CS tributes, is all the early CS alliances, indirectly as a result of all the earlier CS quests.

 

[Stalker0]

One thing that has annoyed about going for CS tributes, is all the early CS alliances, indirectly as a result of all the earlier CS quests.

This proposal would address that, as you no longer have a penalty to your tribute for having influence with the civ. so you could tribute a CS ally should you wish to.

 

[Recursive]

@Stalker0 Current tribute modifiers:

I updated my post with my recent changes to VP.

Also, I made a mistake in explaining global military power - it's not 50% of the bully's power compared to the average, it's (bully's military might * 100 / total military might in world) / 2.

A possible thing to look at could be removing the / 2 divisor or reworking how the calculation works in general, as being compared to the entire world's military might is rather punishing for the "Overall military power" modifier, especially if playing with 43 civs. Just an idea.

 

[rkkn]

that total military might thing seems like it needs to scale number of civs or map size or something. not sure what makes the most sense though

 

[azum4roll]

I sponsor this.

 

[Recursive]

Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.