Another thread about capturing cities..
- Thread starter EsoEs
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Ahriman
Tyrant
I agree that there is something of a pacing mismatch problem; 10 turns resistance in the early game is pretty inconsequential, but 20 turns in the late game is vast.
Another idea I had; could resistance rates be tied to Autocracy social policies somehow?
That could be quite cool, Autocrats manage to stamp out resistance faster.
Bridger
Prince
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- Nov 10, 2005
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I agree that the supercities can just get too big. I also feel like the tradition finisher feels a bit bland but also very powerful for tall AND wide empires. Maybe instead of making Tall empires even taller, the finisher could be something like +5% or +10% science in your oldest 3 cities. This could help tall empires make up for the fact that they have weaker science production with, say, 3 cities at 30 pop vs. a wide empire that has 8 cities with 15 pop each. I almost always grab Tradition even when I'm going for Wide empires because it helps my new cities grow so much faster and it stacks so well with the liberty finisher (walls in every city which provide not only 2 production but now 2 food as well).
Basically this.
Resistance times aren't really the problem facing war civs. The problem is taking AND HOLDING these enemy super cities. Even the slowest growing civ at Immortal or higher will easily have 15-20 pop cities by the early renaissance, and there is literally just no way for the human player to effectively conquer these cities. The honor policy gives you 1 happiness for a garrison and MAYBE and additional 2 on the colosseum. Thats best case scenario +5 happy vs the -20 happy hit you'll take from puppeting said city. Mind you Im still talking about early Renaissance, good luck taking Industrial cities, your looking at an easy 40 pop by early Industrial in core cities. Have fun going from 6 happy to -30 with the click of a mouse.
Ahriman
Tyrant
That just isn't true.
You should have a lot more than 5-6 policies by the renaissance. Heck, 2 picks into Piety can now get you +5 and +3 per city. Colosseum and theater will give you +7.
I also find 40 sometimes in a capital, but not more than that.
And, as I said, I think it might be the case that it it is too easy to grow too large too easily. But I think the right fix for that is to change the food boosters, not to change conquest mechanics or add more happiness.
I could also live with some mild increases in the population loss from city capture; in particular it might be good to make it more proportional, so it is say 1 pop up to size 8, 2 pop up to 15, 3 pop up to 22, 4 pop up to 30, 5 pop for more than 30.
If you were only on +6 happy, and didn't have the gold and ability to buy more happiness buildings, then you weren't properly prepared for a war of conquest. I think you are being unreasonable in expecting that your army is all you need to conquer.
Hmm true the updated Piety tree does help quite a bit..
I came across a number of 35+ pop cities that weren't capitals in my most recent game, are you playing at Immortal difficulty?
Was just throwing some numbers out there but you are absolutely right, if you want to capture more than 1 enemy city you'll need a happiness buffer of AT LEAST 25 happy if you don't want to drop below -10, but again, that seems a bit much.
I like your idea of having pop killed proportional to the pop of the city, but I'd probably increase those numbers you put out there somewhat. And this may be a moot point because I know a lot of the city capture mechanics are part of the "core code" and Thal may not have access to them.
So, I was thinking as I often do:
New conquest option:
Enslave populace
50% of population of conquered city is distributed among your empire
Ideally there would be some way in Lua to code in a 1% chance per slave to spawn rebels.
New conquest option:
Enslave populace
50% of population of conquered city is distributed among your empire
Ideally there would be some way in Lua to code in a 1% chance per slave to spawn rebels.
Ahriman
Tyrant
That just seems way too much. Half?
It would also be too much of a no-brainer. Moving population to my core cities that already have all the nice % multiplier buildings constructed and out of my low-productivity puppet state? Yes please. It would also be weird for slaves to be as productive as regular citizens.
A small % chance of rebellion hardly makes much difference, because it is easy for you to mop up a couple of units here or there. Basically just free xp.
It would also be bizarre in the modern era, and frankly out of flavor for anything beyond ancient times. The Romans enslaved en masse, but even then I think the number of slaves they took was pretty low relative to the entire local population. Slave trade in Africa wasn't really about conquered civilizations. The Ottomans and North Africans captured a significant number of slaves in total, but not large relative to the populations in question.
And none of Christian European countries enslaved each other's populations. Nor Japan. Nor China or India, so far as I am aware. Throughout history, exploiting captive populations in place was the norm, rather than trying to move them en masse, which was a rare exception.
I think it is much better off for you to have to manage your captured population in place, with their unhappiness, then to be able to move them elsewhere. If you want to reduce the population of a conquered city, then you should have to raze it for some turns.
It would also be too much of a no-brainer. Moving population to my core cities that already have all the nice % multiplier buildings constructed and out of my low-productivity puppet state? Yes please. It would also be weird for slaves to be as productive as regular citizens.
A small % chance of rebellion hardly makes much difference, because it is easy for you to mop up a couple of units here or there. Basically just free xp.
It would also be bizarre in the modern era, and frankly out of flavor for anything beyond ancient times. The Romans enslaved en masse, but even then I think the number of slaves they took was pretty low relative to the entire local population. Slave trade in Africa wasn't really about conquered civilizations. The Ottomans and North Africans captured a significant number of slaves in total, but not large relative to the populations in question.
And none of Christian European countries enslaved each other's populations. Nor Japan. Nor China or India, so far as I am aware. Throughout history, exploiting captive populations in place was the norm, rather than trying to move them en masse, which was a rare exception.
I think it is much better off for you to have to manage your captured population in place, with their unhappiness, then to be able to move them elsewhere. If you want to reduce the population of a conquered city, then you should have to raze it for some turns.
or Assimilate Culture at a cost of 1000
delay on next policy.
Ahriman
Tyrant
There is. Occupy them and build (or buy) a courthouse. The courthouse is what represents having pacified the new population.
I don't see why you should be able to short-circuit that process.
We can certainly consider tweaks to the formula for resistance duration though.
I think my idea would be better as it is risky but still rewarding if you are going for quick conquest.
Babri said:
It tends to boil down to two things for me: Current conquest is unrealistic even in Civ terms and methods to inhibit rolling warmachines have consistently been ineffective one way or another via the happiness mechanic
The current system leaves me feeling completely unsatisfied in terms of the currently clunky mechanic of happiness and conquest. To me it is utterly unrealistic that the angry rebels in the city I just conquered from the civilization II have been at war at for 300 years should somehow cause unhappiness in the capital far away and slow its growth. The initial response to me should actually be more of jubilation that we have finally defeated the Eurasia we have always been at war with. What that city does not do, however, is drain my coffers. It costs me no more to maintain a market in a recent warzone than it does in a peaceful little town.
The current system leaves me feeling completely unsatisfied in terms of the currently clunky mechanic of happiness and conquest. To me it is utterly unrealistic that the angry rebels in the city I just conquered from the civilization II have been at war at for 300 years should somehow cause unhappiness in the capital far away and slow its growth. The initial response to me should actually be more of jubilation that we have finally defeated the Eurasia we have always been at war with. What that city does not do, however, is drain my coffers. It costs me no more to maintain a market in a recent warzone than it does in a peaceful little town.
Ahriman
Tyrant
I think you are interpreting happiness too literally.
To me, happiness is a measure of social control. It might be through bread and circuses, or it might be through repression.
It makes perfect sense to me that trying to integrate a new territory into my empire will be a difficult and costly thing that will make it harder for me to maintain control; the new people will have a different culture, language, social hierarchy, etc.
I'll probably have to bring in resources from elsewhere to help control them (send in my black & tans or brute squad, which means those guys aren't controlling people elsewhere). And it will be more difficult to govern the new, larger empire - though somewhat easier if I allow them to retain some local governance (puppet mode).
Plus, from a gameplay perspective, in Civ5, happiness is the mechanism for controlling expansion. Trying to get away from that is just not a good idea IMO.
If happiness doesn't slow your rate of conquest, then we're going to go back to a situation where conquest is way too strong. If conquest is always good for your economy, like it was in Civ4 past the early game, then conquest will always be worth pursuing.
As it stands, I still normally quit the game after I win a big war against my biggest rival, because in doing so I crush them and establish myself as top dog, and no-one else will have any chance of beating me.
On standard settings, by the time I conquer and take the best cities from 2 rival civs, I'm normally set for the rest of the game.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Population itself doesn't have many direct effects. We generally have to look at non-population factors.
Tech pace is probably okay with the recently added 20% cost increase. Production seems to be alright. I only run out of things to build if I'm in the last ~20 turns of a small+tall culture or science game. I see emptying the build queue at that point as a feature - it lets us quickly skip through the final stretch of a game we know we've almost certainly won. Policy rate is independent of population until museums, which are late in the game.
Some things population does have a direct effect on are city spacing and worker importance. Taller cities increases the value of spacing cities further apart to work more tiles. I like this, because it encourages intelligent city placement over of the mostly-defeated infinite city spam of the past. As long as science, production, and culture are controlled to a reasonable pace, I see higher populations as a positive influence on gameplay.
Tech pace is probably okay with the recently added 20% cost increase. Production seems to be alright. I only run out of things to build if I'm in the last ~20 turns of a small+tall culture or science game. I see emptying the build queue at that point as a feature - it lets us quickly skip through the final stretch of a game we know we've almost certainly won. Policy rate is independent of population until museums, which are late in the game.
Some things population does have a direct effect on are city spacing and worker importance. Taller cities increases the value of spacing cities further apart to work more tiles. I like this, because it encourages intelligent city placement over of the mostly-defeated infinite city spam of the past. As long as science, production, and culture are controlled to a reasonable pace, I see higher populations as a positive influence on gameplay.
I agree, I love having higher populations, higher production etc than in vanilla. HOWEVER, these numbers are putting a huge thorn in the conqueror's side. I really dislike the attitude of the people posting in this forum, people act like conquering another civ shouldn't be allowed, or that it is somehow unfair to the AI. Civ has always been about conquest and always will be. And again, people are missing the point. The issue I have is not with general conquest, taking 1 or 2 cities, its with the viability of a Domination Victory. I really don't understand how people are so OK with this Victory type being next to impossible to achieve barring extremely lucky AI capital city placement and/or other AI civs taking a capital or two for you along the way. Are we just agreeing to ignore an entire Victory type so we can compare who has the tallest city?
Ahriman
Tyrant
@Thal
Higher populations than vanilla and slightly lower populations than current are not mutually exclusive. Its not the cities that are size 20-25 that are a problem (which are relatively rare in vanilla until the very late game)), it is the ones over size 30.
@EsoEs
a) We don't agree that it is impossible to achieve
b) I think you want to make it too easy
c) I think you want to make unrealistically large numbers of people get butchered by city capture
d) Civ is not only about conquest; conquest has traditionally been the most powerful strategy because it strengthens you as it weakens enemies, but I think it is great that we are managing to put some limits in and make other strategies viable
e) The solutions you propose would affect more than just a conquest victory, you seem willing to destroy the general conquest/build balance in order to make it easier to conquer the entire world
Higher populations than vanilla and slightly lower populations than current are not mutually exclusive. Its not the cities that are size 20-25 that are a problem (which are relatively rare in vanilla until the very late game)), it is the ones over size 30.
@EsoEs
a) We don't agree that it is impossible to achieve
b) I think you want to make it too easy
c) I think you want to make unrealistically large numbers of people get butchered by city capture
d) Civ is not only about conquest; conquest has traditionally been the most powerful strategy because it strengthens you as it weakens enemies, but I think it is great that we are managing to put some limits in and make other strategies viable
e) The solutions you propose would affect more than just a conquest victory, you seem willing to destroy the general conquest/build balance in order to make it easier to conquer the entire world
I fully agree that Conquest is unreasonably complicated as it stands. If a large conquering force needs to stop and twiddle its thumbs after every city for 15 turns waiting for entertainment structures to be built for the vanquished, I think there is a fundamental issue.
Peronally, I would rather a conquered city cost an arm and a leg in GOLD to maintain while it assimilates into the empire. I also think this would be far more realistic, and in turn may lead to happiness issues thanks to lack of finances, but conquest does not directly lead to people stopping having babies (the current system).
I also get irked that I simply cannot just abandon a city I conquered. Let the old empire take it back in its pillaged and ruined state.
Peronally, I would rather a conquered city cost an arm and a leg in GOLD to maintain while it assimilates into the empire. I also think this would be far more realistic, and in turn may lead to happiness issues thanks to lack of finances, but conquest does not directly lead to people stopping having babies (the current system).
I also get irked that I simply cannot just abandon a city I conquered. Let the old empire take it back in its pillaged and ruined state.
Tids
Chieftain
This seems to remind of options for city capture from a different game (Rome:Total War 
)
Just wondering if some of the options could be related here.
There would be occupy, which would leave the population reasonably the same, with some cash. This could also bring in a moderate amount of unhappiness
Enslave, which would spread the population of the captured city across your empire (therefore increasing unhappiness in each city due to pop increase but could be made more?)
Exterminate, which would reduce the population. This would make the city basically a newly settled one, so less unhappiness, although less total reward. Plus a larger amount of cash compared to occupy.
And sack, which would destroy a larger amount of the buildings in the city and turn it to a rebel city (although for this it could indeed just go back to the previous owner). This would give the most amount of cash.
)Just wondering if some of the options could be related here.
There would be occupy, which would leave the population reasonably the same, with some cash. This could also bring in a moderate amount of unhappiness
Enslave, which would spread the population of the captured city across your empire (therefore increasing unhappiness in each city due to pop increase but could be made more?)
Exterminate, which would reduce the population. This would make the city basically a newly settled one, so less unhappiness, although less total reward. Plus a larger amount of cash compared to occupy.
And sack, which would destroy a larger amount of the buildings in the city and turn it to a rebel city (although for this it could indeed just go back to the previous owner). This would give the most amount of cash.
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