Anex vs Puppet balance?

Hi,

Do you think they've got the balance wrong?

Annex:

Major unhappiness that requires a Courthouse. This takes the city out of the picture for many turns and drains economy.

Puppet:

No unhappiness penalty and can be productive (even though not under your control) immediately).

Don't you think that Puppeting is too strong?

So, how about reducing the penalty for Annex, or increasing the penalty for a Puppet?

Possibly both, but I'd especially encourage adding some sort of penalty for puppets. The latest patch notes mention something about rebels arising as a result of unhappiness. I'd like to see them arise with puppets; the longer a city stays a puppet, the more likely it is to rebel. (Un)happiness could modify the probabilities, and so could troop garrisons, but I think it would be more interesting if you had to worry about puppets eventually rebelling.

The other possible penalty would be a local version of corruption, where the benefit (gold, science, whatever) you get from a puppet is smaller than you would get from a city that you annexed and fully incorporated into your empire.
 
As otheres have stated I only anex if its a realy good production city or I need a city to buy troops out of.
 
I would go even further and say something like... For whatever reason (time, unhappiness, etc), the rebel aspect of the new patch could be further expanded, something like creating new 'city-states' out of unhappy puppet states. that could add a fun element. perhaps a city state allied to its original owner or something.
 
I think a puppet should require a garrison (like my fatherland, Germany O_o).
If you don't put one there, it should give same unhappiness as annexed cities do.
Annexed cities, on the other hand, should be less unhappy if a garrison is in. If a courthouse is finally build there a garrison isn't needed in that city anymore.

effects:

1. garrisons are more meaningful then they are now.
2. exessive warmongering is dealt with (at least a bit) because parts of the army have to garrison, or at least the huge maintaince for tons of (warrior) garrisons will stop expansion sooner or later.
 
Regarding Annexed Cities.

From my point of view annexed cities are hell to deal with and it supposed to be that way. Look at every conquered city in the history (especially visible in europe) in past 300 years. Making annexed cities cooperative is extremely costly.

Maybe there should be a system of incorporating Annexed Cities into Motherland (something like Claim for Europa Universalis series) so previous owner would feel less bad about loosing a city, over time, while at the same time the city itself would identify with new Civ more, over time, and would get totally incorporated with no Courthouse needed at the end.

Regarding puppets.

Puppets are cheap and have a lot of advantages but I find few things strange in Puppet mechanics.
1. Puppet should not drain anything. It's a different state which is paying tribute to the master, therefore it should not drain gold, resources, or anything else, maybe except happiness as having puppets should have impact on the population state of mind :)
2. Puppet should not be completely loyal to the master, except there is no Parent civ anymore and Puppet State is treated well. Otherwise it should fight for independence or for ability to be incorporated into parent civ.
3. Puppet State should be treated as City States with "Permament Ally" turned on, while attitude should impact how much they fight for independence.

- Disorder should be dealt by stationing Military on Puppet State territory.
- Having a PS should impact on relation with Parent Civ.
- PS should not be allowed to have military except when during a Revolution.

Regarding Raze and settle strategy.

There should be a mechanism, of some kind, which would prevent players from razing cities. Big international repercussions, Unhappiness increase (temporary and decaying over time), so there would be no easy way out of the Puppet/Annex problem.

Nevertheless, I think, the whole problem of Annex/Puppet is not because bad balance between those, but because there is third, easy way out, which I find an exploit and therefore I don't use it.
 
I'm not completely sold on the "they only produce good stuff" argument.

They build some buildings that I would probably not build in a non-production city I control. Plus, they might have some buildings I wouldn't want when I took them over.

It doesn't take too much in unwanted or unnecessary buildings built or already in place to offset that 5 gpt for a courthouse.

For example, Temple + Granary + Watermill + Stable = 6gpt

If the city has more advanced buidlings like a hydro plant, you can get 3gpt of the 5gpt cost of a courthouse (+ 1 aluminum and a little gold) back just by annexing and selling that one building.

A lot of times these late game conquests have excess happiness buildings so the happiness budget can withstand a little more annexing too.

I just wanted to come back to this point because I was playing this weekend and took a city that had 8 or 9 gpt worth of buildings that I wouldn't have built (in late game gold harvesting mode.) Then, I noticed the puppets were starting a lot of other buildings I wouldn't have built - walls, gardens, monuments, etc.

(In a non-production city I only build science and gold buildings, and in the late game conquest mode they mostly run gold.)

So, by annexing I dealt with 10 or so turns of additional unhappiness that I could afford (I think it was an 8 pop city and only went down 3:c5happy: when I annexed, BTW) but got to destroy/prevent 8 to 10 gpt worth of unwanted buildings and an additional ~80 or so gold for selling the buildings. Plus, you can now allocate the citizens yourself and perhaps squeeze a little more optimal mix from them. Also, after courthouse, you can set the city to produce wealth and pick up another 3 or 4 gpt instead of unwanted buildings with additional maintenance.

So, there is both immediate and long term gold payback for annexing in this situation.

As well as the ability to purchase units in the city, and/or make the occasional item with hammers in a pinch.
 
Possibly both, but I'd especially encourage adding some sort of penalty for puppets. The latest patch notes mention something about rebels arising as a result of unhappiness. I'd like to see them arise with puppets; the longer a city stays a puppet, the more likely it is to rebel. (Un)happiness could modify the probabilities, and so could troop garrisons, but I think it would be more interesting if you had to worry about puppets eventually rebelling.

The other possible penalty would be a local version of corruption, where the benefit (gold, science, whatever) you get from a puppet is smaller than you would get from a city that you annexed and fully incorporated into your empire.

I think this is the right track to take. The problem isn't with annexed cities not being beneficial enough; they only seem so because puppets are too good. My patch notes would look something like:
  • Civs receive 50% of the gold produced by a puppet city

  • Civs no longer pay maintenance costs for buildings constructed in a puppet city

  • Civs no longer receive science or culture from a puppet city

  • Puppet cities produce 50% less unhappiness from population

  • Puppet cities have an increased chance of spawning rebel units when your empire is unhappy
You're just milking puppet cities for cash. They aren't part of your culture, they aren't making discoveries for you. Your puppet governor cooperates with you because you're making him rich (compared to his citizens). And in exchange, he and his fellow rich elite maintain the status quo, reducing the amount of unhappiness you have to deal with yourself.

If it worked this way, you might actually want to annex a good city, if you had the happiness to absorb it. You might not get as much gold out of them since you'd start paying for the buildings, but you'd get science in exchange (and culture, but I guess that would potentially be a wash since your SP cost would go up).

...or something like this, I dunno. I guess the, uh, streamlined version of my post is "nerf puppets".


Edit: As things are now, I almost never annex. If the city has a high hammer potential, then maybe. Or, if it's coastal and I need a port, also a maybe. But otherwise...I'd rather pay for unnecessary buildings, than take the hit to social policy progress. Just slap trading posts everywhere and forget about it.
 
^LordTC

Annexing to raze a city is not really annexing--it's just a step on the way to razing. I'm talking about annexing to keep the city.


Ok question because I never tried it (but assume it doesn't work), the way this reads, you are saying you annex a city just to raze it- BUT, you can just hit the raze button on the city to do that and if you *do* annex it, you're stuck with it, right? Are you saying you can raze a city of your own at any time? You *should* be able to, but I don't think you can.

Assuming there is a way to annex and raze, anyone try that with a capital or city-state that you are not allowed to raze? I know some of those blasted city-states I would love to raze.
 
^swordspider

You're correct that you can't raze enemy capitals or CSs.

I was answering LordTC whose post basically said you annex on your way to razing, which is not what annexing is about. You're right--if you're going to raze a city after conquering it, you can do so immediately without going through annexation. Of course, you can also raze annexed cities any time afterward as well.
 
^swordspider

You're correct that you can't raze enemy capitals or CSs.

I was answering LordTC whose post basically said you annex on your way to razing, which is not what annexing is about. You're right--if you're going to raze a city after conquering it, you can do so immediately without going through annexation. Of course, you can also raze annexed cities any time afterward as well.

Cool. Thanks for the info, that gives a lot of tactical possibilities if you want to hold the line but then fall back and keep the rest of the empire growing. I wish you could raze capitals and city-states though, I understand the goal of being able to liberate them, but in a multiplayer game about half the time razing an enemy capital would be more beneficial than letting it join your empire and for sure razing city-states would be beneficial, especially when the city sucks but it covers a tile you want.
 
Cool. Thanks for the info, that gives a lot of tactical possibilities if you want to hold the line but then fall back and keep the rest of the empire growing. I wish you could raze capitals and city-states though, I understand the goal of being able to liberate them, but in a multiplayer game about half the time razing an enemy capital would be more beneficial than letting it join your empire and for sure razing city-states would be beneficial, especially when the city sucks but it covers a tile you want.

The ''can't raze capital rule'' make multiplayer games still winnable if you lose your capital. It wasn't the case in civ4.

In one of my games i lost my capital (backstabbed me while i was at war...didnt see this at all) but i retook it later when my army came back. If he had razed it i dont know if i would get a chance to win. I finally took my capital with 15 longswordmen against his 5 longswordmen parked on hills around the capital. That was a bloody fight lol
 
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