A core set of balance changes

[Ahriman]

The problem is that Unhappiness does not hinder conquest.
We've suggested
Penalty for Unhappiness= Continued Resistance
But a Resisting city gives an actual BENEFIT and Provides no actual Penalties besides Unhappiness
So if the only penalty for Unhappiness is Unhappiness.....? then what is the point.

Wth are you talking about??
If you conquer a city, that causes unhappiness. Unhappiness is bad; it reduces growth, production and military strength on an empire-wide basis.

If unhappiness sufficiently painful to hinder conquest, then the correct design solution is to make is so that negative happiness is really bad. Not to go around creating other mechanics to penalize conquest.
A resisting city gives a small benefit (terrain), and a significant penalty (unhappiness).

- The 5 gold + opportunity cost of a courthouse + lost population/buildings on Annexing makes razing and resettling more preferable.
- Puppets don't contribute to policy costs
- Puppets build useless buildings, and feel like a game of dice. Causes researching some techs to turn into a detriment.
- Puppets don't give control to the player, which is less fun (I might be alone on this one).

Puppets provide just as much gold and science and culture output as regular cities.
I don't think that the lack of control is a problem; in fact I think this was the core design reason for the whole puppet mechanic in the first place, to create a low-MM option when conquering so that you didn't have to manage the city yourself. You'd annex the good cities you wanted to keep, and leave the rest as puppets.

I think the clear core solution is:
Fix puppet build AI to focus on useful stuff.
Reduce puppet productivity of beakers, hammers, gold and culture.

And then *maybe*
Maybe make puppets unaffected by Maritime city states.
Have puppets contribute a partial increase to social policy costs.
Decrease the loss of population and buildings when a city is conquered (all happiness buildings get destroyed, but culture buildings can be kept).
Increase puppet resistance length. Have permanent resistance without a unit present.
Prevent razing without a unit present.

I see no reason to reduce courthouse maintenance. However, I would consider having courthouse costs scale by era (or number of cities), so that they weren't completely unbuildable in the early-midgame.

Note that reducing the population loss will also penalize razing.
At the moment, if you capture a size 10 city and raze it, it drops to pop 5 takes 5 turns to raze, and contributes 7+6+5+4+3 = 25 cumulative unhappiness.
If that size drops only to 9, then it takes 9 turns to raze and contributes 11+10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3 = 63 cumulative unhappiness.

Let's make the following assumptions, so we can simplify this, as we're already changing these things:
- Maritimes are balanced
- It's detrimental to lose happiness, and players want to stay at least above 0

Precisely. There is no point in constantly complaining that unhappiness doesn't matter.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Precisely. There is no point in constantly complaining that unhappiness doesn't matter.

But it doesn't. Not Currently. And not with "Resistance continues in Unhappiness" because once you are Very unhappy, the additional benefits from going even more unhappy from taking a city(more Territory even if the city is resisting) are outweighed by the costs... (None, exactly 0, you are already Very Unhappy)

This is very important, because unhappiness is the only penalty for conquest.

The best way to make Happiness matter to to make it a hard cap.. ie if your population and cities are making you Very Unhappy, then your population (or cities) will get reduced.

Forcibly Reducing Population is prefereable to Forcibly Reducing Cities.

So ... If Very unhappy...
1. No building Settlers
2. All non-occupied cities lose 1 population if their pop>1 (don't even modify growth, if they can grow at 1 pop per turn, let them)

That's all the "penalties" that are needed, and makes it similar to Civ 4's "city happy cap"
Because it guarantees you will not be Very unhappy for long.

And this way getting more unhappy population through conquest is bad because it will reduce the productive population you have in your "Good" Cities. It will mean that Imperial Population is capped at ~Total Happiness-2 per city. This cap then affects science and most other forms of output (gold, production)





As for Puppeting being a Low MM option..... That's what a City Governor should be... if you want low MM, turn on the City Governor... its the same thing (almost)


The overall issue with Puppets is that they should be worse output per unit of unhappiness than a normal city.
so either
1. remove all output, and almost all unhappiness+costs, in this case it is OK for the puppet not to be controllable since its decisions don't affect your empire at all.
or
2. reduce output, keep current costs, in this case the Puppet Should be controllable.


Preventing Razing without a unit present is a good idea.

 

[Ahriman]

But it doesn't. Not Currently.

So We Fix That Problem. Have you *read* the thread? We have several proposals for making negative unhappiness hurt you more.

Don't try and balance puppets based on an assumption that happiness costs aren't serious downsides.

The best way to make Happiness matter to to make it a hard cap.. ie if your population and cities are making you Very Unhappy, then your population (or cities) will get reduced.

That's one way, but I don't think its the best way. I don't think you should ever actually lose citizens except to starvation and war. Its easy enough to penalize the output of people without actually needing to remove the people.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

So We Fix That Problem. Have you *read* the thread? We have several proposals for making negative unhappiness hurt you more.

Yes, one of the proposals was mine(continued resistance), that was based of the idea that resisting cities would not give you territorial control,
This was impractical from a game engine perspective


The other appeared to be a -X% to various outputs (science, hammers, gold, culture) based on Unhappiness.
This is impractical from a gameplay perspective

That's one way, but I don't think its the best way. I don't think you should ever actually lose citizens except to starvation and war. Its easy enough to penalize the output of people without actually needing to remove the people.

The big problem with penalizing output but not removing the population is the "hole you can't get out of" You must be Able to get out of the hole, and must Want to get out of the hole.

The issue is you need a system that will
1. allow someone with -100 Unhappy to recover,
as well as
2. make them Want to get more happiness, even if they are already at -100

The current system does #1... it does not do #2
(Gold did #2, when you can sell buildings it does #1 as well)

Penalizing % of Science, Production, Culture, Gold, etc. would violate principle #1
in pretty much any %output penalty model, at -100 unhappiness you would get 0 gold, Science, production, culture... 0 of anything that was penalized

what would be the result
0 Science->inability to research tech that could lead to happiness
0 Culture->inability to implement a policy that could lead to happiness
0 Production->inability to build Happiness buildings
0 Gold->must sell off happiness buildings (Really bad)
0 Combat Capability -> Might lose cities (OK this would help you become more happy)


On the other hand
If you lose population when at Very Unhappy.... then Building a Colluseum when you are Very Unhappy means you will "save" 4 more population. Avoiding taking an extra city will "Save" 2 more population.
And Going to -100 Unhappiness means
You will start becoming Happier (by getting rid of those unhappy citizens)


Currently, the system works pretty well if Conquest is not included (the only way possible to get to -100)
If you are Normal Unhappy.. you get effects that Reduce your unhappiness (less pop growth)
If you are Very Unhappy, then you Don't get any more unhappiness Except by conquest.

So except for conquest,
Very Unhappy-> you will get no more Unhappiness+your ability to get happiness is not reduced much (there is the -50% production, but that just takes longer)

If you keep getting additional unhappiness by conquest, and your Output is penalized, then you become Less able to get additional Happiness.

Growth should continue to be the primary penalty for Unhappiness... Growth... if you have "Very Unhappy", city population growth should be negative.

This gives you additional Happiness, automatically... Normal Unhappiness is to give you time to deal with it yourself. Very Unhappy should be when the game engine forcibly gives you Happiness. Instead of stopping you from getting any.



Now the "No leaving Resistance" when Very Unhappy Idea was designed for this.... ie No new city Growth, No New Settlers, and no cities leaving resitance.. You pop is capped.....
But Your unhappiness isn't...
You can keep taking additional cities and getting the benefits of their Territory for no additional cost. (already very unhappy)

The key... thing that Unhappiness affects is Growth...
Currently
Regular Unhappy->Slow Growth
Very Unhappy->No Growth

If Very Unhappy was Negative Growth,
Then
Very Unhappy+lots of pop would ALWAYS
go to
Regular Unhappy+less pop.

So the X Unhappiness penalty for a Resisting city would actually be -X population for the Rest of your civ.

That is a reasonable penalty.

Now 1 pop from everywhere in your empire might be a bit much.

Perhaps
-10% growth rate for each point of unhappiness up to 10
-10% total food production for each point of unhappiness more than 10

so at -20 Happiness your cities would all produce 0 Food. (and all lose 1 pop per turn)

Bigger pops would actually be slower to fall since they would have a bigger food box/pop capacity.

 

[Ahriman]

The other appeared to be a -X% to various outputs (science, hammers, gold, culture) based on Unhappiness.
This is impractical from a gameplay perspective

How is it impractical? It would be relatively easy to code, and would have the desired gameplay effect (punish the player for negative happiness).

The big problem with penalizing output but not removing the population is the "hole you can't get out of" You must be Able to get out of the hole, and must Want to get out of the hole.

You can still get out of the hole slowly by building happiness buildings.
You can get out of the hole rapidly by selling off extra cities, or trading for more luxuries, or buying happiness buildings, or policies.

It is just not true to say that removing population is the only way of getting you out of the hole.

The issue is you need a system that will
1. allow someone with -100 Unhappy to recover,

Sell off your excess cities in diplomacy.

2. make them Want to get more happiness, even if they are already at -100

Smaller penalties at smaller (absolute value) levels of unhappiness.

Penalizing % of Science, Production, Culture, Gold, etc. would violate principle #1
in pretty much any %output penalty model, at -100 unhappiness you would get 0 gold, Science, production, culture... 0 of anything that was penalized

No, it doesn't.
Note, I never included gold in my list (which *could* trigger you into death spirals), only science, production, culture - and growth.
And maybe GPP production and research pacts could do in there too (to stop you being able to for example still get techs through great scientist).

There is just no reason why you have to create an entirely new mechanic where you start losing population. Work within the existing mechanic, which is yield penalties at negative happiness.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It is just not true to say that removing population is the only way of getting you out of the hole.

Sell off your excess cities in diplomacy.

Those are the two options.... a player a -100 can either
1. lose cities
or
2. lose pop

The player should be able to choose.
There is an easy game mechanic for choosing to lose cities if you want to

There is not an easy game mechanic for losing pop (you can't emphasize "Starvation" on a city governor)

No, it doesn't.
Note, I never included gold in my list (which *could* trigger you into death spirals), only science, production, culture - and growth.
And maybe GPP production and research pacts could do in there too (to stop you being able to for example still get techs through great scientist).

If you don't include Gold, then the only Effective penalty is Science (which might be effective), since Production can be bought

There is just no reason why you have to create an entirely new mechanic where you start losing population. Work within the existing mechanic, which is yield penalties at negative happiness.

The current existing mechanic yields
1. Fixed Growth Penalties at Normal Unhappy
2. Fixed Growth, Production, and Combat Penalties at Very Unhappy

Variable increasing mechanics would be new.

The "Super easy" fix.
Instead of (or in addition to) a -50% Hammer production, -50% Food production. Once Maritimes have been fixed, then cities will starve off, as only Boosted Farms can fully support a population.

(even before maritimes are fixed, most cities can't produce 4 food per pop unit on Average.)

 

[Ahriman]

The player should be able to choose.

Why?

And if they want to lose pop, they can; annex a puppet and raze it down to a lower pop.
Or they can starve their cities to death.
Population comes from food. You shouldn't be losing population as long as you have the food to support it.

And your method doesn't give the player a choice either, it has *involuntary* population loss at low happiness levels.

There is not an easy game mechanic for losing pop (you can't emphasize "Starvation" on a city governor)

You can lock your tiles on non-food tiles.
There is no need for a governor option for an incredibly rare situation. You're never going to get a very large negative unhappiness unless you really try to do so. Its not something that happens by accident.

If you don't include Gold, then the only Effective penalty is Science (which might be effective), since Production can be bought

And culture, and growth. Penalizing gold *would* make a hole you couldn't dig out of easily, because you need gold to pay maintenance costs on happiness buildings (among other things).

The current existing mechanic yields
1. Fixed Growth Penalties at Normal Unhappy
2. Fixed Growth, Production, and Combat Penalties at Very Unhappy
Variable increasing mechanics woud be new.

You're being deliberately obtuse.
A yield penalty (to combat, production, etc) from unhappiness is a clearly existing mechanic.
Losing population from unhappiness is not an existing mechanic.

Instead of (or in addition to) a -50% Hammer production, -50% Food production. Once Maritimes have been fixed, then cities will starve off, as only Boosted Farms can support a pop.

Except, this fails the basic logic test. Your population, if they're enslaved and unhappy, might hide their wealth, refuse to pay taxes, stop producing cultural works and stop investing in new ideas. They won't stop feeding themselves just because they're pissed at you. And they don't have the wealth or ability to be able to emigrate in large numbers (until the modern era, and even then only from relatively open societies).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Why?

And if they want to lose pop, they can; annex a puppet and raze it down to a lower pop.
Or they can starve their cities to death.
Population comes from food. You shouldn't be losing population as long as you have the food to support it.

And your method doesn't give the player a choice either, it has *involuntary* population loss at low happiness levels.

At that level they can either instantly sell cities
or deal with Gradual pop loss.

You can lock your tiles on non-food tiles.

Lots of MM
selling a city= easy, can be done instantly.
razing can be done too (not instantly though)... but that is getting rid of a city rather than pop really.

There is no need for a governor option for an incredibly rare situation. You're never going to get a very large negative unhappiness unless you really try to do so. Its not something that happens by accident.

No you keep conquering, which is a sensible thing to do.
also, making the Penalty fit the cause is useful.

When you have too much excess Gold loss, what happens... Gold using units get disbanded

So when you have too mush Unhappiness.... Happiness using population should get disbanded.

And culture, and growth. Penalizing gold *would* make a hole you couldn't dig out of easily, because you need gold to pay maintenance costs on happiness buildings (among other things).

Culture is minimal in most ignoring happiness cases
Growth is already penalized (and should be more as I have said)

You're being deliberately obtuse.
A yield penalty (to combat, production, etc) from unhappiness is a clearly existing mechanic.
Losing population from unhappiness is not an existing mechanic.

No the Primary penalties for "unhappiness" are against population
at normal unhappiness that is the Only penalty
at Very Unhappy, that is 2 of the 4 penalties (stopping you from getting more population peacefully)

You could (very simply) make the situation
at Very Unhappy, you may not conquer enemy cities. at all

And that would solve the Ignore Happiness problem, entirely eince you would never have to worry about going over.

But they figured that was too much so they left a loophole, a way to get additional population while you are Very Unhappy. Conquest.... is the Only way a Very unhappy population increases.

Why?

Why have the "No Growth, No Settlers" if -50% Production, -33% Combat was enough.

No Happiness is designed to be self-adjusting, so that you can deal with it... or the game will deal with it for you (by stopping growth)

Except, this fails the basic logic test. Your population, if they're enslaved and unhappy, might hide their wealth, refuse to pay taxes, stop producing cultural works and stop investing in new ideas. They won't stop feeding themselves just because they're pissed at you. And they don't have the wealth or ability to be able to emigrate in large numbers (until the modern era, and even then only from relatively open societies).

Tha assumes that Happiness (game) is remotely connected to happiness (reality)
It isn't its a Pop cap... why do your people stop reproducing when they are unhappy?

The most "realistic option" would be cities spontaneously rebelling and switching to the enemy, or generating barbarian units in the borders of your cities. But that has been deemed "unfun". So instead of losing cities, they Capped population... but to keep it fun they decided to leave a 'conquest loop hole' and hoped that the 50% production and 33% combat penalties would work against that.

And if you want a "realistic" explanation. The people aren't working as effectively in the fields because of the atmosphere of fear that is necessary for your evil empire to maintain control, so they hoard food and it spoils, and the women+children don't work in the fields because one of your enforcers might be by might be bored.

Diseases go untreated because people are afraid to seek treatment,
For an example look at post Soviet Russia... their Average life span went down due to poor health.

So -50% food production... wala
It fits 'mechanically' with the other mechanics (just like the -50% hammers)

and it creates a system where going into Very unhappiness, is not only fixable, the game fixes it for you (just like going into a gold deficit).

 

[Paeanblack]

The most "realistic option" would be cities spontaneously rebelling and switching to the enemy, or generating barbarian units in the borders of your cities. But that has been deemed "unfun". So instead of losing cities, they Capped population... but to keep it fun they decided to leave a 'conquest loop hole' and hoped that the 50% production and 33% combat penalties would work against that.

What's your take on my idea for puppets and unhappiness?:

If your Golden Age happiness bucket is empty AND you have negative per-turn happiness, your puppets go into revolt. If you have not fixed the situation within the standard revolt length, that puppet will become a NEW city-state. The new city-state will have starting relations of 6x your current unhappiness per turn (calculated after losing the puppet). If you are at -10 or more unhappiness per turn, that means they are at war with you.

Annexed cities will not do this. The revolt is your warning to annex the city if you don't want to lose it.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

But it doesn't. Not Currently. And not with "Resistance continues in Unhappiness" because once you are Very unhappy, the additional benefits from going even more unhappy from taking a city(more Territory even if the city is resisting) are outweighed by the costs... (None, exactly 0, you are already Very Unhappy)

This is very important, because unhappiness is the only penalty for conquest.

The best way to make Happiness matter to to make it a hard cap.. ie if your population and cities are making you Very Unhappy, then your population (or cities) will get reduced.

Forcibly Reducing Population is prefereable to Forcibly Reducing Cities.

So ... If Very unhappy...
1. No building Settlers
2. All non-occupied cities lose 1 population if their pop>1 (don't even modify growth, if they can grow at 1 pop per turn, let them)

That's all the "penalties" that are needed, and makes it similar to Civ 4's "city happy cap"
Because it guarantees you will not be Very unhappy for long.

And this way getting more unhappy population through conquest is bad because it will reduce the productive population you have in your "Good" Cities. It will mean that Imperial Population is capped at ~Total Happiness-2 per city. This cap then affects science and most other forms of output (gold, production)





As for Puppeting being a Low MM option..... That's what a City Governor should be... if you want low MM, turn on the City Governor... its the same thing (almost)


The overall issue with Puppets is that they should be worse output per unit of unhappiness than a normal city.
so either
1. remove all output, and almost all unhappiness+costs, in this case it is OK for the puppet not to be controllable since its decisions don't affect your empire at all.
or
2. reduce output, keep current costs, in this case the Puppet Should be controllable.


Preventing Razing without a unit present is a good idea.

I like your ideas on unhappiness. Indirectly, The Emigration mod seems to already do what you propose here. Anytime you are unhappy at all, you have a chance of losing a citizen to another civ. But the chances and number of citizens you may lose increase greatly the more unhappy you are. If you reach "very unhappy", you're likely to lose many citizens on a single turn. So, like you propose, "very unhappy" can't last because, as you lose citizens, you become happier.

This also smoothes the unhappiness scale (8 unhappy is worse than 2 unhappy because you're more likely to lose more citizens on that turn).

You may want to have a look at The Emigration mod. As I said above, it effectively puts some of your core suggestions into play. I'd like to hear your opinion of it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

What's your take on my idea for puppets and unhappiness?:

If your Golden Age happiness bucket is empty AND you have negative per-turn happiness, your puppets go into revolt. If you have not fixed the situation within the standard revolt length, that puppet will become a NEW city-state. The new city-state will have starting relations of 6x your current unhappiness per turn (calculated after losing the puppet). If you are at -10 or more unhappiness per turn, that means they are at war with you.

Annexed cities will not do this. The revolt is your warning to annex the city if you don't want to lose it.

Well Puppets have an original owner, so I'd just say they become part of their original owners empire... Otherwise I partially like the idea.
(I'm generally in favor of some type of "City Flipping")
It doesn't provide a penalty for Unhappiness if you only Annex/Raze though.


The idea behind the Emigration Mod sounds good, although I think a bit complicated for the basic game (it adds an additional benefit of Happiness, and provides an additional way to manipulate city populations)

 

[Khaim]

If your Golden Age happiness bucket is empty AND you have negative per-turn happiness, your puppets go into revolt.

Annexed cities will not do this. The revolt is your warning to annex the city if you don't want to lose it.

So if I'm negative and about to lose puppets, why shouldn't I just annex them all? The only penalty is more unhappiness, but since I don't have any puppets left I don't really care.

As Ahriman has been saying for the last few pages, we shouldn't link unhappiness penalties to puppets. They're related, sure, but the best solution is to fix unhappiness by itself. If we did, the current puppet system would be much better.

I would start by making the combat penalty more severe (or scale up to a high cap). Mechanics already exist for bonuses within your borders; can we reverse this and have penalties outside your borders? That would be a neat twist on the old "away units" tax. Instead of having your offensive force hurt your empire, we have the empire hurt your offensive force. Push too fast, and you won't cripple yourself, you'll just start losing due to combat penalties. I think that's what the current system is meant to do, but the numbers aren't big enough to compensate for tech advantages.

 

[Roxlimn]

My personal perception of puppets is that they shouldn't give you anything other than territorial control, and that they shouldn't cost you anything but happiness. No control whatsoever - not even tech. They will build Barracks and units. That's it.

Of course, no one wants this. Players want to have their puppets be beneficial so they can war and have it pay off. I'm not sure how this works out. Players want to win easy through war, but not have it be too easy. Not sure where the ideal there is, since I'm completely against having war be better than REX.

 

[Ahriman]

I would start by making the combat penalty more severe (or scale up to a high cap). Mechanics already exist for bonuses within your borders; can we reverse this and have penalties outside your borders? That would be a neat twist on the old "away units" tax.

I think that military penalty both inside and outside borders fits best. If you go on a conquering rampage and go deep into unhappiness, we want to make it easier for other powers to come in and pick you apart (ie by penalizing your military defensive effectiveness) not just make it so you can't conquer further.

I think there is enough inside/outside border different already with Oligarchy, Nationalism and Himeji Castle.

My personal perception of puppets is that they shouldn't give you anything other than territorial control, and that they shouldn't cost you anything but happiness.

Then they would be horribly underpowered, and basically useless. Why should you take a large happiness hit just to gain some territory?

since I'm completely against having war be better than REX.

Why? REX costs you nothing, you just build settlers. War means you have to build a military and actually fight, and expend resources.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Why? REX costs you nothing, you just build settlers. War means you have to build a military and actually fight, and expend resources.

REX costs you open territory... and only takes open territory from someone else.

War doesn't cost open territory, and takes Cities from you opponent... it is massively more beneficial to your Competitive standing to Take a city rather than found one (all else being equal)

That is why war has the additional costs of military.


and in any case, for variety's sake there is little sense in having Puppets be "annex lite". They should be Different in kind.
BUT

If they charge Building Maintenance, then they should be controllable as to which buildings to build

If they Don't charge Building Maintenance, then they shouldn't give any gold.

If they don't give social policy costs, they shouldn't give social policy culture.

Perhaps that might be it....
Puppets give Normal Unhappiness, and Normal Science, but 0 Gold, and 0 Social Policy culture, but are uncontrollable. (they only build non-resource using buildings.) They benefit from No Building Maintenance, and No Social policy Cost.

(So they become like a City State... that you pay for with unhappiness instead of gold)

This way there is still a cost (Unhappiness)... and a corresponding benefit (Science).. with the "Territory" as a side benefit.

If they don't charge Building Maintenance, their Happiness Buildings Probably Shouldn't count... not sure on that.

 

[Ahriman]

REX costs you open territory...

I don't understand what you mean here. Just because I pump out lots of settlers doesn't mean that my cities have to be tightly packed. Space is generally not a binding constraint on the number of cities you can have in the early game.

If they charge Building Maintenance, then they should be controllable as to which buildings to build

Why? As long as they don't build military buildings, I see no problem.
I have no problem with them costing building maintenance, and being unable to control them, my problem is only that they build military structures (barracks, forge, etc) and that they hardly ever build gold boosters. This is one partial reason to annex.

There is no reason to make their buildings or happiness function differently from other cities. A yield penalty is massively simpler than creating culture that doesn't count as culture, or buildings that don't count as buildings.
You're over-complicating things.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

.
Why? As long as they don't build military buildings, I see no problem.
I have no problem with them costing building maintenance, and being unable to control them, my problem is only that they build military structures (barracks, forge, etc) and that they hardly ever build gold boosters. This is one partial reason to annex.

There is no reason to make their buildings or happiness function differently from other cities.

See your own statement...

An uncontrolled city functions differently than anything else.

Anything you don't control, shouldn't affect you (except for AI players)

I'd like to see them either "controlled, productive, costly" (although that would be more Annex-lite)
OR "uncontrolled, unproductive, free"

.
A yield penalty is massively simpler than creating culture that doesn't count as culture, or buildings that don't count as buildings.
You're over-complicating things.

A yield penalty means it is practically pointless Having puppets... they are just "Annex lite".

 

[Ahriman]

See your own statement...

My statement contains no argument that you need to be able to control what puppets do.

Anything you don't control, shouldn't affect you (except for AI players)

Why?
You make the conscious choice to give up control (and micromanagement hassle) in order to not suffer a short-term happiness penalty.

A yield penalty means it is practically pointless Having puppets... they are just "Annex lite".

They're annex-lite, yes.
What's wrong with that?
You either get a very big short-term happiness hit in exchange for long-term control, or you don't take that happiness hit, but get lower yields.

What would make puppets practically useless would be if they didn't give you *any* income.

*edit*
From the patch list
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94438

City - Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold.

Sounds promising.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

My statement contains no argument that you need to be able to control what puppets do.

There is no reason why one city's control should be different than another.

Why?
You make the conscious choice to give up control (and micromanagement hassle) in order to not suffer a short-term happiness penalty.

You can give up the MM hassle +control by using the city governor.

Puppets should Not just be a short term stop off before annexing.

Otherwise You should just get normal unhappiness from annexed cities unless you are currently building a courthouse.

They're annex-lite, yes.
What's wrong with that?

The choice to Puppet or Annex should be an actual important choice, or it should be eliminated. (ie Long term Puppets should be a reasonable option)

Currently they are, but only because they give Culture without Social Policy Costs.

Now you can fix that by either
1. making them annex-lite (add social policy costs)
2. make them distinct (their culture doesn't contribute to the empire culture)

What I would see Puppets as, ideally, is "resistance plus"...ie they are a resisting city that doesn't give you unhappiness, and can be annexed, and can build buildings (those buildings having no effect on your empire unless you annex the Puppet).

You either get a very big short-term happiness hit in exchange for long-term control, or you don't take that happiness hit, but get lower yields.

What would make puppets practically useless would be if they didn't give you *any* income.

You don't need income from them if they don't give expenses. You have denied it to the enemy, and kept the option open for adding it to your empire. (as you mention, that would be TOO powerful if there were no expenses at all.)

 

[Ahriman]

There is no reason why one city's control should be different than another.

Sure there is. Half the point of puppets was to avoid MMing weak cities, to speed up gameplay.

You can give up the MM hassle +control by using the city governor.

Choosing buildings?

Otherwise You should just get normal unhappiness from annexed cities unless you are currently building a courthouse

Why? You keep making these assertions without any kind of argument.
The whole point of annexing is to make a short-term temporary happiness hit in order to gain long-term control.
The idea in part was to get you to puppet during a war, then gradually annex and courthouse afterwards (as your happiness allowed).

There is nothing broken about this system, so there is no overwhelming need to change it.
This whole thread is supposed to be making the minimal number of changes needed to get the game to play well. Don't fix what isn't badly broken, and work with the existing mechanics whenever possible.

he choice to Puppet or Annex should be an actual important choice

Its not so important now because puppets are a bit too strong. Weaken puppets, and it *will* be an important choice, with short-term costs vs long-term benefit tradeoffs.

What I would see Puppets as, ideally, is "resistance plus".

That's nice. But that's not what they are. And they don't need to be "resistance plus" for the game to work. So save that for a separate design project, rather than one focused on the minimal core changes.

You don't need income from them if they don't give expenses.

But there is no need to make them not give expenses. Buildings in puppet cities shouldn't suddenly stop costing anything.