[Vote] (7-84) Lebensraum Rework

[pineappledan]

Current Lebensraum
Receive 10 Culture and Golden Age Points when your borders expand, scaling with Era.
Citadel tile-acquisition radius doubled.

Lebensraum Proposal
Receive 10 Culture and Golden Age Points when your borders expand, scaling with Era.
Retain land after you raze cities.
Can plant citadels in any land adjacent to your land

In other words, you can plant Citadels in enemy territory as if it were neutral land. Tile radius remains at 1.

Rationale
The problem with Lebensraum is that 2 tile radius citadels does so much more than allow you to "tunnel" into other civs' land:

• 2 tile radius means you can fight entirely inside your own land in order to get to the next citadel spot you want to place. You never have to fight in enemy land, which means you can fight with permanent +10 HP healing advantage over your enemy, and no anti-warmonger fervor
• Having your next citadel placement be inside your own land also means that your GGenerals don't need to enter foreign land to plant the next citadel. This means you don't need open borders via agreement or war to push forward stealing tiles. You can do this while at peace, at no risk to your GGs
• 2 tile radius means you have a 5 tile wide front where you can plant your next citadel. That basically means blocking a Lebensraum civ with your own citadels to block placement is impossible, because they can just go around you. It requires 4 citadels for every 1 a Lebensraum player places to block a direction.
• 2 tile radius is immune to being blocked by citadels preemptively, because having tile steal that reaches further than the NoTwoAdjacency limit means you can just steal the citadels from the enemy.

If the tile radius remains at 1, but you can plant citadels in any land adjacent to your land, regardless of ownership, you can still create chains of citadels, but you have way more limitations than now:

• an opposing citadel can actually block you, and you can't just steal it
• You have to actually fight into an enemy's land in order to get your GG in position to plant the next citadel. For at least 1 tile you actually have to dislodge a civ on their own turf
• You have to have some sort of diplomatic contact with the civ you are stealing from in order to be able to path your GGeneral onto their land in the first place. You have to be at war or have open borders in order to culture bomb inside their land

Now, on its own this different bonus is nowhere near compensatory for losing the 2 radius. That's why we need a 3rd bonus that also matches the theme of land land land that the rest of the policy is focused on. Keeping land from razed cities allows you to retain the resources from a territory and none of the people. Very Lebensraum, and situationally useful if you are just trying to conquer and move on.

Complex Proposal: DLL & Database Changes Required

 

[Rekk]

Retain land after you raze cities.

I think leaving this off makes it more likely that it'll be sponsored.

 

[pineappledan]

But then the tenet kinda sucks. With just the citadel bonus it’s a massive nerf and not worth being picked.

 

[ma_kuh]

Maybe an implementation fallback: "Razing a city grants Border Growth in the nearest city."

Not perfect but maybe it works out okay for non-naval invasions.

 

[rkkn]

Maybe an implementation fallback: "Razing a city grants Border Growth in the nearest city."

this is better, since it adds a way to trigger the yields that it gives

 

[pineappledan]

Except not as good for… you know… actually having Land. A border growth bonus around you existing cities is going to result in claiming some 4th ring deep ocean tiles. Meanwhile you lost the tiles that were around an actual city with resources etc that you could actually use.

 

[ma_kuh]

I agree that border growth outright isn't going to be better, but it might be a more realistic implementation if the leave-land-behind mechanic proves difficult.

Also if you're starting from a beachhead and conquer-razing cities, that city may still have tiles to grow. Or if you plant a new city, it will definitely have tiles to grow.

 

[hokath]

What city do the razed city's tiles belong to now? The nearest city? Your capital?

 

[L. Vern]

I like the idea of the tenet allowing use of citadel anywhere on your border including enemy territory. Feels like by far the cleanest change to me

 

[pineappledan]

I agree that border growth outright isn't going to be better, but it might be a more realistic implementation if the leave-land-behind mechanic proves difficult

Doesn’t sound that hard to have tiles already owned by you remain owned by you instead of reverting to neutral.

Also if you're starting from a beachhead and conquer-razing cities, that city may still have tiles to grow. Or if you plant a new city, it will definitely have tiles to grow

If you raze resettle inside Lebensraum’d territory, you would have super low cost expansions with your 2nd or 3rd ring already built out.

What city do the razed city's tiles belong to now? The nearest city?

Nearest city, though I think a check might have to be put in place if a new city is settled.

 

[Rekk]

Nearest city, though I think a check might have to be put in place if a new city is settled.

You can check right now to see what happens if you settle in another city's claimed 4th/5th ring.

 

[azum4roll]

A new city will just claim all the tiles in radius 1.

I think you can kind of simulate what will happen by using IGE+ to set neutral tiles to "Your land", and see which city they belong to.

 

[Anarcomu]

Another possible bonus, already proposed somewhere else :
Successfully (up until the last pop) razing a city spawn a colonist in the nearest city/in place of the previously razed city (eventually, that colonist get a promotion which gives it extra yields on founding)

 

[pineappledan]

Sponsor note:
This proposal requires the addition of the following new abilities:

A new Improvement column for the Citadel build prerequisite and a matching Policies column to pair with it:​

Currently the Citadel uses InAdjacentFriendly​

I am guessing a new version of this column would have to be made that works identically to InAdjacentFriendly unless a specific policy switch is flipped. And then we need to add that specific policy switch onto Lebensraum​

A new policy ability that allows you to not lose owned tiles when the city owner is destroyed.​

 

[Rekk]

Sponsor note:
This proposal requires the addition of the following new abilities:

A new Improvement column for the Citadel build prerequisite and a matching Policies column to pair with it:​

Currently the Citadel uses InAdjacentFriendly​

I am guessing a new version of this column would have to be made that works identically to InAdjacentFriendly unless a specific policy switch is flipped. And then we need to add that specific policy switch onto Lebensraum​

A new policy ability that allows you to not lose owned tiles when the city owner is destroyed.​

At some point, GGs apparently used to be able to culture bomb in adjacent enemy territory, in general. It would be helpful to find out exactly which patch this was changed.

 

[pineappledan]

Regardless of how it used to work, we have other improvements like Eki that use that same Boolean value, and need it to work as it does now, without having the ability to be built in adjacent enemy territory as something they can unlock with a policy.

 

[Rekk]

Regardless of how it used to work, we have other improvements like Eki that use that same Boolean value, and need it to work as it does now, without having the ability to be built in adjacent enemy territory as something they can unlock with a policy.

I'm literally just looking for a point in time where I can look in the code history and see how it was developed before.

 

[azum4roll]

Is InAdjacentFriendly an OR column or an AND column? If it's OR, the policy can just provide another OR criteria to make it work.

 

[Recursive]

Last minute sponsored.

 

[dostillevi]

I like everything but keeping land from razed cities. That feels like a significant departure from existing mechanics and might be confusing for the AI. Wish this had a counter-proposal.