[R&F] AI city state murder

[nzcamel]

I'm generally okay with all that, but I do wish liberating a city-state would give you guaranteed suzerain over a city state for 50 turns (on epic speed) in addition to the 3 envoys. As for Scotland, we'll see if the devs already know about this and have something to prevent this abuse, or they may patch it in the future, or they may just ignore it.

I think 50 turns is too long on Epic. I wouldn't expect that long on Marathon! Maybe 10 turns on normal; 15 on Epic; and 30 on Marathon.

 

[Kryxal]

How about 3 free envoys in the ancient era for liberating, and add one for every era forward? Combine that with walls, and the city-states would be less squishy and give more of a reward later. The AIs could still take it away from you, but it would be more effort and in the later game you'd at least have the 6-envoy bonus.

 

[Goliht]

The bonus to liberating the city state is to put it back in play, doesn't matter if you're suzeraine or not, you're taking it out of direct control and you get a huge respect bonus from the ai civs for liberating it. That's plenty of reward. Sure if ai's have spare envoys they'll dump them into it and take it out of your control, but if you never put envoys into it, you get 3 bonus and if you did you get a headstart and can add more as well.

 

[Kyro]

The bonus to liberating the city state is to put it back in play, doesn't matter if you're suzeraine or not, you're taking it out of direct control and you get a huge respect bonus from the ai civs for liberating it. That's plenty of reward. Sure if ai's have spare envoys they'll dump them into it and take it out of your control, but if you never put envoys into it, you get 3 bonus and if you did you get a headstart and can add more as well.

And if I have 10 I lose 7 envoys and having to mount an invasion on the other side of the map across 3 continents and 4 civs to liberate that city state from a weak Civ I can crush anytime just makes killing everyone all the more desirable.

 

[Goliht]

And if I have 10 I lose 7 envoys and having to mount an invasion on the other side of the map across 3 continents and 4 civs to liberate that city state from a weak Civ I can crush anytime just makes killing everyone all the more desirable.

If you protected your investments, you'd not loose any.

 

[Kyro]

If you protected your investments, you'd not loose any.

If you think it's so easy to protect a city state across continents and players should not have alternatives to defending city states just like real life or in Civ 5 and a simple addition such as a threaten function should not exist you are gravely mistaken.

 

[Goliht]

I disagree, if you're going out on a limb to invest in somewhere that is difficult to maintain, it's your own fault if someone else takes that away from you. By default, if you don't prepare for everything, only one to blame is you. I always have soldiers guarding my important city states, sometimes with sea and air support later in game. If as you say they are on other side of world, then it would be more important to have a small force nearby to protect them, but, I'd probably not even bother with city states that were so far away that they couldn't be effectively protected. You make that choice, you take on that responsbility.

No reason to ruin everyone elses game, because you can't play your own. The art of war, is not only about physical combat.. it's about all forms, mental, paranoia, economic, scientific..

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[Kyro]

I disagree, if you're going out on a limb to invest in somewhere that is difficult to maintain, it's your own fault if someone else takes that away from you. By default, if you don't prepare for everything, only one to blame is you. I always have soldiers guarding my important city states, sometimes with sea and air support later in game. If as you say they are on other side of world, then it would be more important to have a small force nearby to protect them, but, I'd probably not even bother with city states that were so far away that they couldn't be effectively protected. You make that choice, you take on that responsbility.

No reason to ruin everyone elses game, because you can't play your own. The art of war, is not only about physical combat.. it's about all forms, mental, paranoia, economic, scientific..

No it's not my fault that the game doesn't have a threaten function.

You know how I liberate City States? I wipe the offending Civ off the map. Far more profitable for me that way anyway.

You telling me it's my fault for showing mercy? Please. I promise not to take their cities for my own, they leave my city state ally alone. Simple logic, one you can't seem to be able to understand.

 

[Sostratus]

Agreed. You should be the guaranteed suzerain for a fixed amount of time after liberating them.

Yes,
the liberator should get 6 or more envoys and other civs should be unable to send envoys for 20 turns or more.

What drives me nuts about losing CS to AI is that investing 15 envoys into e.g. Zanzibar over the course of a tug-of-war suzerain fight, only to liberate and get a meagre three back -even in late game- just sucks, because you just aren't getting those envoys back.

I would be very happy if they either:
1) let the liberation envoy bounty increase over time- maybe one per era would suffice. That's three envoys in the middle ages, 6 in the modern era, and 8 in the information era. They could always cap at 6.
or
2) when a CS is captured, unlock all the non-quest envoys placed there and send them back to your pool.
Then at least it wouldn't sting so much.

Conquering a CS on most maps is usually shooting yourself in the foot, because even if you don't have Suze, the districts bonuses are so strong at 6 envoys that it's almost impossible for one city to really justify it. Exceptions would at best be either military & religious CS that aren't relevant for your strategy, or if it happens to be the city location of the greek gods. (I had a toronto recently with a full 6 adj. IZ, a river, and eight sea resources, mostly in the 3rd ring around its peninsula- plenty of land. Tempting!)

BTW, does anyone know what the limit for when you stop getting envoys is? I feel like I've run it out in a very long game once right after release, but I could be run. Does it just continue forever? Is it capped at total number earned, or total number placed, or something?

 

[Goliht]

Technically it's on an endless timer, if you use the cards and depending which government you're in, you'll always get envoys every x number of turns.

Simple logic, one you can't seem to be able to understand.

Oh I understand very well, you don't like the truth. Learn to play.. I think that's the correct term.

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Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Sure you can wipe out the civs, but if you were playing a non war game.. kinda defeats the purpose.. or maybe you might play a liberation/protection game, where you only defreat ai forces, but won't cap cities.. or you could be going to a religious vic or culture vic.. neither of which really lend themselves to wiping out various civs, because they stole your city state.

As I said before.. there's various forms of combat or intrigue. They don't all necessarily involve physical violence.

And the game does have a threaten function. It's called putting your soldiers on the ai's borders.. do that and they'll never leave home.

 

[Kyro]

Oh I understand very well, you don't like the truth. Learn to play.. I think that's the correct term.

Sure you can wipe out the civs, but if you were playing a non war game.. kinda defeats the purpose.. or maybe you might play a liberation/protection game, where you only defreat ai forces, but won't cap cities.. or you could be going to a religious vic or culture vic.. neither of which really lend themselves to wiping out various civs, because they stole your city state.

As I said before.. there's various forms of combat or intrigue. They don't all necessarily involve physical violence.

And the game does have a threaten function. It's called putting your soldiers on the ai's borders.. do that and they'll never leave home.

I've never seen the AI withdraw troops from a City State they're invading even as I march my armies into their capital. I don't know where you got this delusion that you can convince them to leave by "threatening" them. They want that city state they will get it even if it means losing all their cities. That's plain silly and you claiming that's good design is appalling.

Truth? The truth is that the design is bad and your attempts to prove otherwise have been completely baseless. I guess your solution for bad design is simply to yield to it rather than demand change. Sloppy.

Learn how to play the game? You haven't explained why it is less skillful to exterminate a Civilization than simply demanding it to stop. If conquering the AI is a better option which I already can do I don't see how resorting to a less skilled method of diplomacy is considered "learning to play the game."

You haven't explained why such a demand for AI to stop at the threat of extinction isn't good design. Oh wait you can't, because it actually happens in reality as a strategic option. You want to claim what they do in reality is stupid?

You haven't explained why it is a logical or smart AI behaviour to conquer a City State knowing full well its Suzerain has a superior military force ready to completely destroy it.

Don't be a coward and answer those questions if you want to accuse players of not knowing how to play the game.

 

[Archon_Wing]

What exactly was wrong with Civ 5's pledges to protect again?

I mean the problem is that sure, we can defend our CS's by going to war, but that's like the solution to everything.

 

[Goliht]

I've never seen the AI withdraw troops from a City State they're invading..
Truth? The truth is that the design is bad..

Learn how to play the game? You haven't explained..

I have. Many times. Yes, if the ai is currently "at war" it will usually continue to fight the cs. But if you get there first you can usually lure them away.
You can cap their cap and swap it in peace talks for the cs and then liberate the cs if you don't want to travel.

Yeh there's bad design in the game. But for the most part, that doesn't actually matter if you know how to workaround it.

It isn't my job to explain the game to you, it's your job to work that out.

If you denounce the ai and then park a sizable army on it's borders, it will assume you intend to attack it and withdraw all it's forces to protect it's cities.

One of the issues in Civ you seem to forget is that the goal is to defeat the player, if the ai doesn't try to weaken the player "because you have a bigger army and can obviously wipe them out" then whats the point in playing the game? The ai will use any tools available, if it knows it has a low chance of killing you because it doesn't have enough soldiers or because doing so will raise it's warmongering score or because it has traits that won't allow it to conquer you then it will try to chip away at you in some other way, in some respects it might try to take control of cs by using envoys, in others it'll cap the cs to remove it from your control. Because that's all it can do.

People complain the ai is rubbish.. then they complain the ai is good.. decide which side you're on.

What exactly was wrong with Civ 5's pledges to protect again?

I mean the problem is that sure, we can defend our CS's by going to war, but that's like the solution to everything.

Yeh this is amoung many of the reasons I call civ 6 dumbed down, there are many improvements in 5, in trade, in pathing, in animations, in diplomacy that are just lacking in 6. The core complaint that many players make about the ai being bad, is mostly due to mechanics in play that break the ai and a lack of mechanics that would improve it and the game overall. imo.

 

[Kyro]

I have. Many times. Yes, if the ai is currently "at war" it will usually continue to fight the cs. But if you get there first you can usually lure them away.
You can cap their cap and swap it in peace talks for the cs and then liberate the cs if you don't want to travel.

Yeh there's bad design in the game. But for the most part, that doesn't actually matter if you know how to workaround it.

It isn't my job to explain the game to you, it's your job to work that out.

If you denounce the ai and then park a sizable army on it's borders, it will assume you intend to attack it and withdraw all it's forces to protect it's cities.

One of the issues in Civ you seem to forget is that the goal is to defeat the player, if the ai doesn't try to weaken the player "because you have a bigger army and can obviously wipe them out" then whats the point in playing the game? The ai will use any tools available, if it knows it has a low chance of killing you because it doesn't have enough soldiers or because doing so will raise it's warmongering score or because it has traits that won't allow it to conquer you then it will try to chip away at you in some other way, in some respects it might try to take control of cs by using envoys, in others it'll cap the cs to remove it from your control. Because that's all it can do.

People complain the ai is rubbish.. then they complain the ai is good.. decide which side you're on.



Yeh this is amoung many of the reasons I call civ 6 dumbed down, there are many improvements in 5, in trade, in pathing, in animations, in diplomacy that are just lacking in 6. The core complaint that many players make about the ai being bad, is mostly due to mechanics in play that break the ai and a lack of mechanics that would improve it and the game overall. imo.

I work around it all the time by surrounding city states with scouts and horsemen and the AI never engages in another war after that because its whole army dances around the city state for all eternity. Doesn't sound very smart to me.

You agree that the design is bad yet you choose to deride people for offering constructive feedback on how to fix it. What sort of madness is this.

 

[tedhebert]

You guys talk and talk... In the end, the solution is SO simple... give CS a wall from the start !!! Yes, if you wanna protect them in the end game, you WILL have to take action, but at least at the start of the game, it will become quite difficult for the AI to capture one...not impossible, but very difficult !!!

 

[Archon_Wing]

I'm generally okay with all that, but I do wish liberating a city-state would give you guaranteed suzerain over a city state for 50 turns (on epic speed) in addition to the 3 envoys. As for Scotland, we'll see if the devs already know about this and have something to prevent this abuse, or they may patch it in the future, or they may just ignore it.

The liberation bonus should scale by era. 3 Envoys is actually great early game, so sometimes it's good if a CS dies early, since it gives you an excuse to attack whoever took the CS, and get points for liberation while wiping them out. And you'd get more envoys in the CS than usual.

So I'd say 3 envoys +1 per era after classical. So 4 for medieval, 5 for Renaissance, 6 for industrial.

 

[Goliht]

I work around it all the time by surrounding city states with scouts and horsemen and the AI never engages in another war after that because its whole army dances around the city state for all eternity. Doesn't sound very smart to me.

You agree that the design is bad yet you choose to deride people for offering constructive feedback on how to fix it. What sort of madness is this.

What constructive feedback have you offered? I said some of the design is bad, what you're objecting to, not really.

 

[Goliht]

You guys talk and talk... In the end, the solution is SO simple... give CS a wall from the start !!! Yes, if you wanna protect them in the end game, you WILL have to take action, but at least at the start of the game, it will become quite difficult for the AI to capture one...not impossible, but very difficult !!!

Hmm, if you need to get rid of a cs you now have to wait.. just because some players want to put envoys in them. The city state suffers because it doesn't protect itself, the core design of the ai and how it protects or attacks is a known issue, the problem is compounded by limited resources. No iron, no swordsmen, no horses, no knights and so on.

Maybe a way of safeguarding the cs would be to give each one a unique entry level unit, that handles both melee and ranged fairly well. Maybe some sort of Royal Guard, which makes it overpowered. Then remove the ability to levie the units. Or at least, the RG units. You could maybe do this to Cs units only, making the first 3 units op, giving them a special buff that isn't available elsewhere. Enough to allow it to one shot most ancient and classic era units. But still weak enough to be killed if needed.

Or alternatively a minimum period at the start of the game, when noone can declare war at all. Allowing ai to build up some forces. Since players also use the lack of ai forces to quickly expand by caputuring their cities in early game.

Or code the ai to protect city states as an extra default trait. Then anytime anyone attacked one, you would face condemnation from all the other civs and likely several battlefronts as they all tried to recapture the cs to liberate it.. a sort of cross the board emergency from r&f.

In the later part of early game I usually have 2-3 cs's with about 20 units.. by mid game the cs and the ai in general tends to disband it's armies. Probably to free up building support economy. This kind of thing could be removed for all cs. Maybe halved for the ai, then you'd maybe see midgame and late game civs actually have an army.

This also spreads out into a general ai issue, so maybe work needs to be done to balance it. In civ 5, if you attacked a "protected" cs, the protector nearly always declared war on you. And instead of ai's just denouncing you, they should maybe have different versions of denouncments, ie maybe a diplomatic denouncment which is a general level of disgust at something you've done and then a military backed denouncment, where if you don't cease and desist, it will lead to war.

If players had to face 8-12 ai's all telling you to backoff from city state conquering or you'd face their combined might.. it might give some pause to continue and this also follows for other ai's.

 

[lqwertyp]

Inbalanced? For who? The human player or the AI? Why are we complaining when the AI does things to make itself stronger?

Imbalanced because the player and the AI get envoys troughout the game that are useless because the AI killed all the cs

 

[Kyro]

What constructive feedback have you offered? I said some of the design is bad, what you're objecting to, not really.

The criticisms were crystal clear, you can't pretend you didn't see them when you clearly objected to them.

A: Get AI to consider what happens when you conquer the city state ally of a far superior foe.

B: Allow player a diplomatic option to threaten such an offending party

C: Award 6 envoys at least to a liberated city state. Civ 5 instantly made you a firm ally. Civ 6 makes the liberated city state an ingrate that turns at a whim.

You haven't been able to prove that any of these suggestions are bad because you haven't been able to answer any of my questions, which proves your position is firmly planted in mid-air.

Please, point out to the rest as well why these suggestions are bad or illogical.

Oh and I find your inconsideration of people finding it frustrating to helplessly lose envoys on a distant continent because of rng-determined city state spawn locations revolting. By your definition of what is acceptable, one should invest envoys purely on the basis of the city state's location for possible protection (completely unreasonable), which means anyone who invests envoys on distant continents without an army there to protect it is foolish, which also means anyone who doesn't have multiple armies everywhere protecting every city state ally foolish, which means any player who doesn't go all out military is foolish for trying to get city state allies.

Also, pray tell me how you predict with 100% accuracy which AI is going to invade which City State at any one point of time so that you can move your armies in time to "threaten" them before they actually declare such a war. Your reply on you succeeding in such a threaten hinges on that and I honestly don't believe AI actually holds off its plans to invade a city state because of an army at its doorstep.