Another thread about capturing cities..

[Ahriman]

So let's take example to the logical end in Civ5. Your Milistanian Civ invaded America, and puppeted NY, Boston and Philly. Then they took Chicago and started to raze it. Their happiness plummeted too low, fairly enough it "costs" more happiness to raze. So what does the Milistania do? Quickly they set aside funds to construct theaters and stadiums all around their offshore homeland. And lo and behold, the entertainment so provided put the conquered American citizens all across the Eastern seaboard at peace of mind, nevermind that their compatriots at Chicago are being systematically genocided by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. And you call that "Reasonable mechanic"

You're interpreting happiness too literally, and I think you're not taking a fair level of abstraction.
What does Milistania do? They invest resources in maintaining public order. Yes, i think this is reasonable.

As it so happens the actual building names in-game are theaters and stadiums, but they could just as easily be dungeons and riot police and prison camps and surveillance state.
The game chooses to not have both sets (ie carrot and stick) because we only want one line of happiness buildings, and because the game has a general positive, upbeat vibe.

 

[Thalassicus]

Ok, I think I understand. So a size 28 city is going to have 8 buildings added (7 happiness buildings plus the governor's office). This is ok, as long as the town watch building still only shows up once visually (if you view a puppet) but has a x7 message or tooltip somewhere.

Yes, and the governor's office gives +1 to provide a 25% reduction of the 4/city base unhappiness.

I added a "Hide" tag for the dummy buildings in v108.1. Now they simply do not show on the city view or civilopedia. The information they provide is available more clearly elsewhere (such as the popup when we occupy a puppet state).

• Both puppet state modifier dummy buildings
• Arabia trait effect
• Commerce finisher effect
• "Can build courthouse" trigger

 

[Sneaks]

Again, I would prefer these buildings be shown, not for the least of the reasons being that it makes the lives of people wanting to mod these buildings in some way be able to do so with easy graphic representation.

 

[Ahriman]

Again, I would prefer these buildings be shown, not for the least of the reasons being that it makes the lives of people wanting to mod these buildings in some way be able to do so with easy graphic representation.

My preferences would be (in order):
1) One copy gets shown
2) No copies get shown
3) Multiple copies get shown.

 

[Thalassicus]

#1 is how it worked. When we get access to the game core, the need for dummy buildings will be gone, and we can simply make changes to the internal functions. #2 is similar but slightly less efficient. If modders want to see the buildings the Hide tag can be set to false.

 

[Makaze]

You're interpreting happiness too literally, and I think you're not taking a fair level of abstraction.
What does Milistania do? They invest resources in maintaining public order. Yes, i think this is reasonable.

And I think you misinterpret what razing a city means. Riot police and prison camps are what you build to occupy a city. To raze one you instead knock down everything over 4 feet tall (including the populace) with liberal amounts of bullets, fire, and explosives. This is a question of military power and not a measure of morale, organization, bureaucracy, or any of the other sundry details that happiness abstracts. There is no need for civil engineering tasks or public order and most importantly there is absolutely no effect on the manufacturing or growth capabilities back in your capital.

Arguing as Thal did that making such drastic changes would be out of scope for this or potentially any fan made mod due to the AI is a perfectly logical argument to make. Arguing that the happiness mechanic as it stands is an accurate and reasonable representation of what should be required to raze a city is not.

 

[Ahriman]

And I think you misinterpret what razing a city means. Riot police and prison camps are what you build to occupy a city. To raze one you instead knock down everything over 4 feet tall (including the populace) with liberal amounts of bullets, fire, and explosives. This is a question of military power and not a measure of morale, organization, bureaucracy, or any of the other sundry details that happiness abstracts. There is no need for civil engineering tasks or public order and most importantly there is absolutely no effect on the manufacturing or growth capabilities back in your capital.

But in the example, Boston and New York are not being razed. Chicago is. Boston and New York are just rioting because their compatriots are being razed. So yes, riot police and prison camps are called for.

Arguing that the happiness mechanic as it stands is an accurate and reasonable representation of what should be required to raze a city is not.

Nothing is "accurate", everything is an abstraction.
But yes, it works well for gameplay, so I think it is reasonable. And I think that is a logical argument. You are free to disagree with the argument, but it is an argument. It is not logically obvious that gameplay is better if razing only has military consequences and not happiness consequences.

 

[Makaze]

But in the example, Boston and New York are not being razed. Chicago is. Boston and New York are just rioting because their compatriots are being razed. So yes, riot police and prison camps are called for.

You are correct, those would be called for in New York and Boston. But even if we are not occupying 2 previously friendly cities we still take an illogical happiness hit. Why is that? Even more importantly why there is any effect at all back in the capital of Milistania is still a mystery to me.

Nothing is "accurate", everything is an abstraction.
But yes, it works well for gameplay, so I think it is reasonable. And I think that is a logical argument. You are free to disagree with the argument, but it is an argument. It is not logically obvious that gameplay is better if razing only has military consequences and not happiness consequences.

I do not think it works well for gameplay. In fact it works rather poorly for gameplay as it makes the destruction of very large cities an improperly punishing task. But ignoring that, Civ has a context. It is a high level civilization simulator,and straying from that context by tying together concepts well grounded in the real world in an illogical manner detracts from gameplay. Yes there is abstraction, various related concepts are bundled together, removed, or simplified. But happiness, ostensibly a measure of empire wide civil order, being effected by a military operation (a relatively easy military operation when compared to fighting an armed and organized force for which there is no happiness penalty) is flat out illogical. It contradicts the setting that the game itself has established.

Now if you're willing to view Civ as purely a game and to strip out all the graphics, the concepts, the context, the real world tie ins, to view happiness not as a measure of anything but rather simply a numerical resource generated by objects purchased with other numerical resources then sure it's a reasonable mechanic. Personally I think the act of doing so also detracts from gameplay, but I suppose that is a personal opinion.

 

[Ahriman]

You are correct, those would be called for in New York and Boston. But even if we are not occupying 2 previously friendly cities we still take an illogical happiness hit. Why is that? Even more importantly why there is any effect at all back in the capital of Milistania is still a mystery to me.

But your logic fails to work if *any* other cities are being occupied.
My point is that the game is too abstract for any simple "realistic" story to work well in all case.

In fact it works rather poorly for gameplay as it makes the destruction of very large cities an improperly punishing task.

I think that the destruction of large cities should be a punishing task. There has never been a large modern city that has been razed.

 

[Dunkah]

I think that the destruction of large cities should be a punishing task. There has never been a large modern city that has been razed.

When was the last city in history that has been razed?

Perhaps the mechanic itself should be eliminated after a certain time frame entirely?

If citizens believe that they are going to be killed, they will fight to the last. Once Razing is initiated a very large percentage of the population, (95%), should either flee or fight. Razing should be a fiasco.

I would love to see the Emigration mechanic used to send those citicens elsewhere either as fresh units or Immigrant population. This would make the effects of Razing scale with the size of cities and history.

And then have massive diplomatic reprocussion as well.

Also I would like to see any occupied/ puppeted city have a chance to generate terrorists/ partisans at the very least until the war is over, but it would be better if they did so anytime the host country was at war, or better yet permanently.

 

[Ahriman]

Was the AI food bonus on high difficulty levels removed or adjusted in 108.1beta?
[Changelog doesn't mention it, but this would have a very large impact.]

 

[Thalassicus]

Yes, I'll add that to the changelog.

 

[KmDubya]

What about this:

When you conquer the city and choose raze your happiness is not hammered with the huge -per population but instead a number of units are spawned at the capital. The number could be one per three pop and the type would be vanguard. The pop could be reduced by the number of partisans formed. Having them spawn at the capital would give them a chance to form some semblance of a line instead of scattered units that would be cut down in short order.

Early game with a pop of 6-12 razing a city would add 2 -4 troops of fair quality to the capital. There could be a minimum number based on difficulty. If you go on a Mongol tear thru the civ you would run into a large force that could stop your military. This would seem to be more enjoyable and palatable than the crushing happiness and resulting empire wide crippling effects that you now get.

As stated above razing is a military power affair.

When you occupy or puppet a city you would take the happiness hit since you are trying to keep them somewhat productive -puppets, or a part of the empire - occupy with courthouse. Have the final Honor finisher help in some way could be nice as well. A smaller number of partisans could spawn at the Capital, maybe half of the number generated by razing.

In the example above of Milistan razing Chicago. In reality the people of New York would be thankful that they were not in Chicago. Most people will choose to live rather than die free. In my proposal the people predisposed to resistance would leave the city and join the main army, the ones left behind are the sheep.

The current system works for taking one or two city from a neighbor or even to hammer your competition to make for an easy science win, but it does not lend itself to domination victories other than capital sniping.

 

[Thalassicus]

In order for the AI to understand any significant changes to military situations (like spawning more partisans than the present amount, or in different places), it would require changes in the game core only Firaxis has access to.

 

[tlaurila]

The newest changes to occupied/puppets seem promising to me. Less unhappiness, but less productivity. Perhaps the number of partisans could be increased some to counter happiness-wise somewhat easier conquest/raze runs?

If I read the updates right, though, science buildings remain intact when cities are taken now? Wouldn't call that science boost necessary for the conqueror? Removing the usual /pop without courthouse is a good idea, but the effect of this is diminished if there's library and university always intact, the bonuses of which aren't dimmed by conquest.

 

[Thalassicus]

It's true that libraries now remain, but now population growth is slowed in puppets by 25%, which can reduce science in the long run. I considered destroying libraries but removed that at the last moment. Might add it back later. Between the removal of base sci/pop, and the difficulty to get research agreements and DoFs, it's probably hard enough for conquerors to get research.

 

[Ahriman]

I think libraries should probably be destroyed, or you're back to the old circumstances where conquest can boost crazy science output.

 

[tlaurila]

Another possibility to decrease puppet science output is to shift science building effects more towards +% modifiers instead of +/.

But personally I think I more like the option of being able to get some science out of puppets by the buildings IF they are built, but to not have science buildings be there after conquest (And puppets unlikely to build science buildings anyway, I suppose, but then again, you can't make them NOT build science buildings, so having to pay upkeep on pointless science buildings that give +X% on 0 science is meh too.)

 

[EsoEs]

As I stated in another thread, can we leave conquest mechanics alone for a moment? We just implemented a whole slew of new things with the specific reason that conquest (read: Domination Victory) was much much harder than other victory types.
Sure we buffed conquest, but we also made the VC harder to achieve (the addition of the 33% land mechanic). Lets give them a chance to play out a bit before we form judgements on them..

 

[Sneaks]

As I stated in another thread, can we leave conquest mechanics alone for a moment? We just implemented a whole slew of new things with the specific reason that conquest was much much harder than other victory types. Lets give them a chance to play out a bit before we form judgements on them..

I agree with this. The full breadth of these mechanics will take quite a while to play out (2 weeks would be ideal).