A Deep Dive into Authority

[ma_kuh]

Also, you all, why Authority Happiness and culture bonus is when units sit in the cities? Dont think its very fitting to the theme and gameplay wise it is not the best

So, the part about Authority that doesn't really get said is that, as a social policy, being an authoritarian affects your own population just as much as your neighbors'. I think the sit-at-home bonus is the only example where your army is thematically keeping your own citizens in line; I think it should stay, in some capacity. I choose to see the happiness boost as more of an unhappiness reduction, in the vein of suppressing dissent.

I like all of the more aggressive suggestions being thrown around in this thread, but I would feel a bit off if we ended up getting rid of ALL of the internal-focused bonuses in the policy tree. I would much rather have it lend itself towards one playstyle or another; the ability for Authority to have a fall-back way of generating value when you aren't able to leverage war has been mentioned a lot, and I think this space (lesser, but consistent at-home yields) is how you help raise that floor.

 

[alchx]

Not really about Autocracy, but it has more generals.

Why don't Citadels have built-in roads (railroads) like cities do? Citadel - well, something like a small town with an internal layout, there are internal ways of moving, a gateway to the outside world. A unit that was inside the Citadel cannot quickly leave its limits and go to the rear of its troops for treatment. Constant crush until you build roads.

And the construction of roads by civilian units in a combat zone under constant attacks and shelling is somewhat strange.It might be worth adding the ability to build roads for recon units of the middle and late eras. These units do not find use for me - they are unable to survive in enemy territory under constant shelling of cities. Their only use is to pump the maximum view and put on a hill as an observation post.

 

[Stalker0]

Encampments can spawn on improved tiles, and destroy any improvement on the tile (except Embassies). Defend your roads if they're not in your borders, or your City Connections will be at risk!

I already think that's going to be a problem. Having barb camps just randomly show up between two of your cities, instantly kill a Trade unit, spawning a new barb, pillaging your road so now your unhappiness increases....ug its going to be very unpleasant.

 

[youngsteve]

The new Barbarians should be great for the Aztecs. I might play them first.

 

[Voremonger]

I already think that's going to be a problem. Having barb camps just randomly show up between two of your cities, instantly kill a Trade unit, spawning a new barb, pillaging your road so now your unhappiness increases....ug its going to be very unpleasant.

I don't think it will be that bad. There will need to be three consecutive neutral tiles for a camp to be able to spawn on a road. As long as you're aware of the spawning mechanics I think you'd be able to just buy one or two tiles to prevent the worst spawns.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't think it will be that bad. There will need to be three consecutive neutral tiles for a camp to be able to spawn on a road. As long as you're aware of the spawning mechanics I think you'd be able to just buy one or two tiles to prevent the worst spawns.

Ignore roads for a second, just imagine trade routes between cities. those trade routes will become extremely vulnerable in this new model

 

[CrazyG]

Ignore roads for a second, just imagine trade routes between cities. those trade routes will become extremely vulnerable in this new model

I think the real issue is that barbs pillage instantly (the turn they appear, before you or them can move) and caravans are quite expensive. It happens if you send trade routes to a city state and it gets the barbarian horde quest it happens too.

 

[pineappledan]

- Encampments can spawn on improved tiles, and destroy any improvement on the tile (except Embassies). Defend your roads if they're not in your borders, or your City Connections will be at risk!

Laughs in Canadian.

 

[Voremonger]

Ignore roads for a second, just imagine trade routes between cities. those trade routes will become extremely vulnerable in this new model

I can see that trade routes will be pillaged more frequently in the early-mid game when there are still a lot of neutral tiles. But honestly caravans are so expensive that I'm already quite reluctant to send them through significant stretches of neutral territory anyways; it's not that rare for a random barbarian unit to wander in from somewhere. At least with the map settings that I typically use I don't see the pillaging of trade routes becoming much of an issue.

 

[rusbeh]

Ignore roads for a second, just imagine trade routes between cities. those trade routes will become extremely vulnerable in this new model

Sounds great to me. Trade routes should be vulnerable to attacks. Same for isolated cities.

 

[Stalker0]

I can see that trade routes will be pillaged more frequently in the early-mid game when there are still a lot of neutral tiles. But honestly caravans are so expensive that I'm already quite reluctant to send them through significant stretches of neutral territory anyways; it's not that rare for a random barbarian unit to wander in from somewhere. At least with the map settings that I typically use I don't see the pillaging of trade routes becoming much of an issue.

except I'm not talking "siginificant stretches of neutral territory". We are talking like a 3 tile gap in between your early cities, I mean that's a given unless your settling extremely tight

 

[axatin]

The whole concept of endlessly waging war against city-states just to "farm" XP and bonus yields from unit kills seems very gamey to me. I would guess that it's also one of the reasons why the AI is bad at playing Autocracy. Fighting barbarians and city-states should be done in the early game, and then a war against a major player should be the next logical step. Following ma_kuh's idea, what do you think about the following concept?

1. Bonus yields from kills are replaced with bonus yields from gaining XP in combat, scaling with the amount of XP gained and with the CS of the attacking unit.
2. Clearing a barb camp or conquering a city-state gives XP to all units, together with the corresponding bonus yields.
3. Barracks etc provide a fixed amount of yields per turn

This would give an incentive to clear camps, conquer city-states and wage wars against majors while limiting farming. It would also give an incentive to use melee units in combat and not only play with ranged units as ranged units have a lower CS and gain XP slower. No bonus should be given to the starting XP of produced or purchased units to prevent exploits (endlessly buying and deleting units). Barracks etc need a bonus yield per turn then because building them would otherwise be detrimental.

And btw yes, the XP you can get from fights against CS units is currently capped at 70 (for barbarians it's 45)

 

[alchx]

The whole concept of endlessly waging war against city-states just to "farm" XP and bonus yields from unit kills seems very gamey to me. I would guess that it's also one of the reasons why the AI is bad at playing Autocracy. Fighting barbarians and city-states should be done in the early game, and then a war against a major player should be the next logical step. Following ma_kuh's idea, what do you think about the following concept?

1. Bonus yields from kills are replaced with bonus yields from gaining XP in combat, scaling with the amount of XP gained and with the CS of the attacking unit.
2. Clearing a barb camp or conquering a city-state gives XP to all units, together with the corresponding bonus yields.
3. Barracks etc provide a fixed amount of yields per turn

This would give an incentive to clear camps, conquer city-states and wage wars against majors while limiting farming. It would also give an incentive to use melee units in combat and not only play with ranged units as ranged units have a lower CS and gain XP slower. No bonus should be given to the starting XP of produced or purchased units to prevent exploits (endlessly buying and deleting units). Barracks etc need a bonus yield per turn then because building them would otherwise be detrimental.

And btw yes, the XP you can get from fights against CS units is currently capped at 70 (for barbarians it's 45)

1. The culture will grow very quickly, literally after a poke. It is enough to put a spearman/swordsman in the bushes near the city-state under fire from the walls and do nothing.
2. XP to all units for clearing a barbarian camp is too much reward for a weak target.
3. The Authority lacks science. Even constantly fighting with everyone around and killing, at some point in time you start to sag a lot in science, because. small spikes in kills don't make up for the lack of Concils and Libraries. Barracks can be given +2 (+3) science instead of +1, so that you can safely move along the lower branch of technologies without being distracted by the upper ones. A striking example of the Ottomans - they have a unique building that gives science 20% of the cost of a unit. In the early and middle eras, the Ottomans are leaders in science, even Korea is not able to catch up with them.

It must also be taken into account that the Authority cannot receive science from trade caravans to other empires, because. almost always at war with its neighbors.

 

[CrazyG]

except I'm not talking "siginificant stretches of neutral territory". We are talking like a 3 tile gap in between your early cities, I mean that's a given unless your settling extremely tight

I think the more common issue will be if you send trade routes to city states.

 

[ma_kuh]

I don't mind the idea of needing to leverage a caravan guard army to escort risky trade routes, honestly. The fact that the caravan severely outpaces non-mounted units that could protect it, however, is a concern. (You aren't guaranteed horses, which will make caravans difficult to protect.)

And the micro management of that force... equally problematic.

 

[Voremonger]

except I'm not talking "siginificant stretches of neutral territory". We are talking like a 3 tile gap in between your early cities, I mean that's a given unless your settling extremely tight

I typically have gaps of 4-5 tiles between my early cities. Camps cannot spawn directly between cities if the gap is 4 tiles. At a gap of 5 tiles it's possible but with a single tile purchase you can cover the roads between cities. 2-3 tile purchases should be enough to cover the immediate vicinity of roads at which time you should have enough time to react. Let's also not forget that in the early game one of the cities at the ends of the gap will likely be your capital which has a safe zone of 4 tiles.

 

[Stalker0]

1. The culture will grow very quickly, literally after a poke. It is enough to put a spearman/swordsman in the bushes near the city-state under fire from the walls and do nothing.

Not necessarily, depends on the scaling. If you didn't scale the XP to culture at all for example, you could make it like .2 culture per XP (aka 1 melee burst of 5 XP = 1 culture). Early game that is a solid boost, late game its an afterthought, but the idea is that the tree gets you through the early game, by mid game you are supposed to be enjoying the benefits of those cities you conquered.

The reason this is appealing to me is it helps with those medieval wars. When you have a tech difficient, it becomes hard to "kill" enemy units, you get into a kind of quagmire stalemate. But if your yields are gained from XP, well that's something you can maintain even in the face of a technologically superior enemy.

Now personally with the model I would be all about letting the barracks XP count. Each unit created gives +3 culture, that definitely encourages me to build an army, so what if I delete and remake units....Id have to see the math but I bet money the art process would put you further ahead than burning your hammers in that way.

 

[Zakuzelo]

- Encampments (and their initial starting unit) can spawn in territory that anyone has vision over, but cannot spawn on tiles that are: occupied by a unit, adjacent to a unit, or adjacent to city borders.
- Encampments can spawn on improved tiles, and destroy any improvement on the tile (except Embassies). Defend your roads if they're not in your borders, or your City Connections will be at risk!

How the hell can you "defend your roads" from encampments that destroy improvements instantly upon spawning? You'd have to have a unit every other tile of an out-of-borders road to prevent that. That doesn't seem feasible.

I don't mind the idea of needing to leverage a caravan guard army to escort risky trade routes, honestly. The fact that the caravan severely outpaces non-mounted units that could protect it, however, is a concern. (You aren't guaranteed horses, which will make caravans difficult to protect.)

And the micro management of that force... equally problematic.

Escorting trade routes is a neat idea in concept but in practice does not work at all, not even a little. Caravans move automatically, and if there's an enemy in the way then it's going to run right into it and die long before your escort unit/s can kill or drive it off. Trade routes need the entire area cleared out well in advance to ensure safe passage. As-is that's not actually that hard, but with those new camp rules...well, "problematic" is a good word.

 

[Rekk]

You'd have to have a unit every other tile of an out-of-borders road to prevent that

One every third tile, with the count starting adjacent to your city borders.

There is no real necessity for barbarian camps to destroy roads (although it does need to destroy actual improvements). There's nothing stopping them from pillaging the road afterwards, of course.

 

[nekokon]

I wonder why do ppl assume that authority can simply thrive with their captured cities when there're no war going on ? It takes a long time to get them as good as your core cities and you don't get any benefits doing so like progress, so taking small cities is a loss and without war authority would definitely fall behind quickly. Some types of lesser bonuses during peace time are needed to keep them competitive or at least able to quickly rebuild their captured cities to actually gain benefits from them.