Another thread about capturing cities..

[Ahriman]

I still like the idea of changing Tradition Finisher from +15% food in ALL cities to +10% science in oldest 3 cities

That would be very very weak. Food is more valuable than science, and a 10% bonus to science is negligible, especially when compared to all the other science bonuses.
I would seriously consider a nerf from 15% food down to 10% though. I think we underestimate how powerful 15% food bonus is combined with all the other bonus food.

f 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.

It doesn't. Buy them instantly.

Peronally, I would rather a conquered city cost an arm and a leg in GOLD to maintain while it assimilates into the empire.

But that isn't how Civ5 works; in Civ5 happiness is the resource we use to check expansion.
If you want to rush the assimilation period, then buy the courthouse.

I also get irked that I simply cannot just abandon a city I conquered

Give it away in diplomacy.

 

[Sneaks]

That would be very very weak. Food is more valuable than science, and a 10% bonus to science is negligible, especially when compared to all the other science bonuses.
I would seriously consider a nerf from 15% food down to 10% though. I think we underestimate how powerful 15% food bonus is combined with all the other bonus food.


It doesn't. Buy them instantly.


But that isn't how Civ5 works; in Civ5 happiness is the resource we use to check expansion.
If you want to rush the assimilation period, then buy the courthouse.


Give it away in diplomacy.

Again, the diplomacy answer is an ugly workaround rather than a solution to the problem.

As for happiness, the mechanic has been much maligned since the release of Civ V as it attempts to do many things but does all of them extremely poorly. Saying "that isn't how Civ 5 works" could be said about everything pre-mod.

I think happiness can be an effective counter to natural population growth on a per city basis, but it is then unduly hammered messily on top of conquest via the concept of "global" happiness.

 

[Ahriman]

Global happiness is a core design feature of Civ5. You can't just wish it away. Anything you design to get around that is going to be very, very messy, and is going to make the AI dumber.

Happiness in Civ4 was stupid. It only ever affected a handful of cities, and excess happiness in each city was useless, even when you had other cities that were in happiness deficit. You couldn't easily have an efficient empire with some big core cities and then some small scattered other ones, because happiness benefits from things like luxuries applied equally across all cities.

Global happiness was the most sensible way to fix this; have one, single constraint rather than lots of little tiny constraints, and design it in a way that excess happiness has at least some value. It was a good design move.

Trying to fix some issues about city conquest by changing the whole happiness system is crushing a bug with a sledgehammer.

I think we really need a good analysis of where all the AI population is coming from.
Are there difficulty level boosts to food production? Remove them.
Is it the Tradition finisher? Reduce 15% to 10%.
Is it too much from Maritime City States, or maybe just with Siam?
Are aqueducts and hospitals too powerful (could they be made weaker but cheaper/lower maintenance)?

And we can certainly tweak resistance times.

But once resistance is over, the issue isn't about conquest or not anymore, and the conquered city isn't different from a founded city. I argued for a long time that tall empires were too strong and wide too weak, in part because of the very low happiness from buildings. This has been adjusted. So I'm not convinced yet that there is still a problem.

 

[Thalassicus]

@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.

I could change things like the Hospital to 6, instead of +15%. These numbers are equivalent in a city of size 20 with 40 food. It would help cities get to the 15-20 pop range quicker, while reducing the capability to grow past that.

Personally, I would like a conquered city cost an arm and a leg in gold to maintain while it assimilates into the empire.

I like this concept because it fits of one of the main goals for the three playstyles: conquest has an economic vs military tradeoff. Drop gold low enough and research also suffers. I don't want to completely switch from happiness to gold penalties of course, but would like to explore some moderate changes in this general direction. It's at least worth beta testing.

Some ideas come to mind...

1. Destroy fewer buildings in captured cities.
2. -100% gold in occupied cities, but normal happiness.
3. -25% gold income and unhappiness from puppets.

1. Destroy fewer buildings in captured cities.

Sneaks mentioned this concept before. Each building costs maintenance, but cities in resistance have no gold income, so this would greatly increase the drain on the economy. After the city comes out of resistance it would be stronger than before. This achieves a second goal: rapid conquest is very difficult, but conquest is rewarding in the long run.


2. -100% gold in occupied cities, but normal happiness.

It's doubtful many people will be paying their taxes in this situation. There might be government looting, but that's already represented by the pillaging when the city is captured.


3. -25% gold and unhappiness for puppets.

I don't remember where this idea was mentioned, in this thread or another location. With -25% gold, unhappiness, and culture, puppets are a somewhat weaker but less expensive version of a normal city.

 

[Ahriman]

I could change things like the Hospital to 6, instead of +15%.

This sounds reasonable. It suits wider empires better, but those will have happiness problems.
I would also consider nerfing the Tradition finisher; +food% modifiers (as opposed to +excess food% modifiers) are so incredibly powerful.
For example, a size 30 city will get *at least* +9 food from a +15% food policy, and possibly much more.

I think part of the problem might be the interaction of Maritime CS food with all the multipliers. If I understand correctly, those bonuses are currently coming in before multipliers from policies and buildings. Maybe that should be changed? Or maybe this is just a Siam problem.
But I can't help but think that friendships with lots of MCSs is a driving factor behind AI super-cities that many humans can't afford (because they don't have the gold to spare).

Might also be worth changing the Freedom policy that reduces specialist food from -0.5 food per specialist to -0.4 food (just as the unhappiness bonus is).
Hospital comes very late, and I think the problem is occurring before then.

Destroy fewer buildings in captured cities.

This is fine with me.

-100% gold in occupied cities, but normal happiness.

Honestly, non-issue for me. In huge captured megacities, they'll either be a puppet, or I'll buy the courthouse (or build it quickly). The amount of time spent occupied is trivial.

Another possibility; IIRC, you still get trade route benefits for cities during resistance. Could this be removed? [Also, I'm not 100% sure that this is the case.]

-25% gold and unhappiness for puppets

I'm happy to see something like this; I might even add -25% production too though.
I like the idea that puppets give less unhappiness than actual annexed cities with courthouse; people like local control.
To me, this makes puppeting much more interesting.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree a production penalty sounds good too.

If Siam's trait is too powerful I could reduce it to 25% or 33% (currently 40), and improve the UU/UB to compensate.

 

[Ahriman]

[Note minor edits above.]

 

[Thalassicus]

I think the driving factor behind AI megacities was just the growth bonus they receive. It's up to +70% for Deity level AIs in vanilla, and +33% in the mod. I removed that bonus entirely for all difficulty levels in v108.1 beta. I realized the bonus likely doesn't help the AIs at all. Faster-growing tall cities simply stifles their expansion to new city sites, limiting their capability to claim new resources. I'm hoping this change will especially help militaristic AIs, which struggle with happiness when their cities grow so fast.

 

[EsoEs]

Im happy to see so much discussion on this topic, as it is something I believe really needs to be looked at seriously. But again, let me repeat my point. Its not so much the mechanics of conquering 1 city (although I do think they could be improved) its the overarching viability of the Domination Victory.

Im sorry people don't like the idea of conquering and keeping lots of cities, but its quite unfair to just dismiss an entire Victory Condition because of this feeling. I love how powerful other strategies are in VEM, but the increase in powerlevel of individual cities has made this victory type much more difficult (I still believe it to be next to impossible Immortal or above, I've yet to see anyone post a savegame to prove me wrong here) and we have done nothing to compensate for this. (Well there has been some work to policies to provide some more happiness, but I do not think it is enough to make this victory type viable.)

Basically games play out where you either take out 1 or 2 neighbors then go Diplo or Science, or you play culture from the start and win accordingly. This does provide a TON of replayability thanks to Thals excellent work improving the many different options available to the player. HOWEVER, the Domination Victory does need some love, it should be an achievable victory type available to the player.

 

[Ahriman]

It's up to +70% for Deity level AIs in vanilla, and +33% in the mod. I removed that bonus for all difficulty levels in v108.1 beta.

Ah!
I had no idea the bonuses were so large.
This change alone will probably solve the problem.

I realized the bonus likely doesn't help the AIs at all, since faster-growing tall cities simply stifles their expansion to new city sites.

I do not find to be the case, I still find that most AI's have no difficulty with happiness unless I capture cities that have wonders or many luxuries.

I'm hoping this change will help AI leaders with expansionist characteristics

I think it is unlikely to do so. I think it will weaken the AI across the board, but will mean smaller cities.

 

[Ahriman]

Im happy to see so much discussion on this topic, as it is something I believe really needs to be looked at seriously. But again, let me repeat my point. Its not so much the mechanics of conquering 1 city (although I do think they could be improved) its the overarching viability of the Domination Victory.

Im sorry people don't like the idea of conquering and keeping lots of cities, but its quite unfair to just dismiss an entire Victory Condition because of this feeling. I love how powerful other strategies are in VEM, but the increase in powerlevel of individual cities has made this victory type much more difficult (I still believe it to be next to impossible Immortal or above, I've yet to see anyone post a savegame to prove me wrong here) and we have done nothing to compensate for this. (Well there has been some work to policies to provide some more happiness, but I do not think it is enough to make this victory type viable.)

Your position doesn't make sense to me.

Nobody is "just dismissing an entire Victory condition".

I'm just dismissing the idea that it should be easy to go an conquer lots of cities without penalty or preparedness, because if it is, then warmongering is too powerful relative to other strategies, as in previous versions of Civ.
If you can costlessly raze a city, then there is almost no reason to ever not capture a city, and there is no actual check on a conquest rampage.
It is very easy for example to pivot from a conquest victory to a science victory, in a way that is not easy for most other victory types. If you have beaten up the other powerful AIs and weakened them, then you can cake-walk to a science victory even if you don't capture every capital.

The mechanics of conquering lots of cities are all related to the mechanics of capturing a single city. You can't separate them.

I don't understand what you mean by "increase in powerlevel of individual cities". If you mean that VEM has made tall empire strategies more effective, then I think this is a good thing.

Your happiness problems stem from population, so changes that reduce city size will inherently make it easier to conquer those cities.

You really don't think that removing a +33% AI food bonus and reducing unhappiness from puppets by 25% would make a difference?!?

 

[Thalassicus]

@EsoEs
This project focuses on the areas of Civ most people play, out of necessity. I have limited time and must prioritize. I cannot ensure things are balanced on map settings that are significantly away from average.

According to the Favorite Difficulty poll 96% of people play on Prince through Emperor difficulty levels. On these settings every victory type is more or less equally challenging. I suspect this is also true on immortal and deity, but since I don't play on those settings, I can't say for sure. Balancing things based on if someone can post a savegame on those settings is unreasonable, because only 3 people who visit this forum play on those difficulty levels, and they're likely busy with other things.

I'm not ignoring your concerns. I've reduced the resistance times for cities, reduced the growth rate of AI cities, and am considering changes to shift away from happiness-based conquest limitations towards a more gold-based limitation. These changes will all help dealing with happiness in conquest games on the hardest difficulties.

 

[EsoEs]

@EsoEs
This project focuses on the areas of Civ most people play, out of necessity. I have limited time and must prioritize. I cannot ensure things are balanced on map settings that are significantly away from average.

According to the Favorite Difficulty poll 96% of people play on Prince through Emperor difficulty levels. On these settings every victory type is more or less equally challenging. I suspect this is also true on immortal and deity, but since I don't play on those settings, I can't say for sure. Balancing things based on if someone can post a savegame on those settings is unreasonable, because only 3 people who visit this forum play on those difficulty levels, and they're likely busy with other things.

I'm not ignoring your concerns. I've reduced the resistance times for cities, reduced the growth rate of AI cities, and am considering changes to shift away from happiness-based conquest limitations towards a more gold-based limitation. These changes will all help dealing with happiness in conquest games on the hardest difficulties.

Sweet I didn't mean to imply you were ignoring my concerns, rather what I meant was that it seemd the topic of this thread had shifted to general conquest rather than making sure a given victory type is in fact an obtainable and viable win condition. (probably my fault as I started suggesting city capture mechanics rather than stressing my true point )

As to that, maybe we could look at the Honor tree and improve the finisher, say instead of +2 happiness to puppet coliseums, give a -% bonus to unhappiness in conquered cities (Throwing a number out there, say -33% unhappiness in conquered cities?). Although with the change to the population mechanics this may not be as necessary, we'll have to wait and see how much that changes AI pop.

 

[Ahriman]

rather what I meant was that it seemd the topic of this thread had shifted to general conquest rather than making sure a given victory type is in fact an obtainable and viable win condition

How are you supposed to discuss how to make conquest easier or harder without discussing happiness, population size or city capture mechanics?

maybe we could look at the Honor tree and improve the finisher, say instead of +2 happiness to puppet coliseums, give a -% bonus to unhappiness in conquered cities (Throwing a number out there, say -33% unhappiness in conquered cities?)

Honor should not be a big happiness-boosting tree in my opinion.
It would also make no sense for conquered cities to have less unhappiness than built cities, and -33% unhappiness would be a colossal benefit, probably the single most powerful policy in the entire game.

I also think that finishers should be weaker than a generic policy; they're a free reward for concentrating in a tree, they don't take up a pick so they don't need to be as powerful as a pick.
+2 happiness per city would be way too strong for a finisher ability.

 

[Makaze]

The happiness mechanic as it relates to razing cities simply does not make sense. Is it a sufficient if highly abstracted mechanic for the incorporation of newly conquered cities into an expanding empire? Absolutely. I feel like garrisoning should play a larger role and partisan revolts should be possible in and around that city regardless of empire wide happiness. But those are extra features and not something that's fundamentally wrong.

But requiring a massive happiness buffer to raze a city simply doesn't make sense. I don't care what the citizens of my soon to be pile of charred rubble think, I want them dead. My productive citizens back home don't care what they think, they want them dead. Even if we assume that happiness is an abstracted measure of my ability to organize and govern a sprawling empire effectively it doesn't come into consideration under these circumstances. I don't need a massive amount of civil bureaucrats flown in from the capital thus starving my organizational efforts there. I've got 4 infantry, 3 artillery, 2 tank brigades, and a nuke in a pear tree that are going to through the miracle of high explosives and nuclear fission flatten whatever won't burn on its own.

Now having said all that there should be mechanical aspects in place to make blazing a path of fire and bodies a not always optimal solution. It should take time, and potentially require a halt/consolidation of forces. So there need to be some negative aspects but they should be things like huge diplomatic penalties, localized revolts (potentially massive for massive cities) during the razing, destruction/pillaging of map improvements, or bonuses and the mobilization of free units in the attacked empire representing rallying refugees and citizens volunteering to help out against those who have so wronged them. But what should not happen is all growth and production empire wide coming to a screeching halt because my military is continuing to carry out military operations, only vastly easier now because the other side isn't armed...

Having happiness penalties for razing cities (in addition to all of the other bad things listed above) actually makes sense for some societies. All of the above is realistically predicated on having a population that either hates the enemy sufficiently or objectivises them to the point that they simply do not consider them fully human. Sounds like something an autocratic society might do perhaps? So it might make sense to have one of the policies in autocracy allow for a lack of a happiness penalty while razing. I think someone mentioned it earlier in the thread and concur.

But having said all of that that's a major change to the razing mechanics and may be out of scope for this mod. So be it. But let's not pretend that using happiness to restrict burning cities to the ground is a reasonable or accurate mechanic. It is at very best a kludge.

 

[Sneaks]

I like a lot of the ideas in here.

In regards to adding the financial penalty and lightening up on the happiness one:

The puppet option should result in less unhappiness than it currently does, at perhaps a flat increased gold cost (add a 5-10gpt maintenance on the Governor).

Initial non-puppet occupation should result in the free building Provisional Council or Military Council. The council should require about 10gpt to maintain and would be pretty much the graphical representation of your empire's presence in the city.

Assimilating the city into the empire would still require building a courthouse to handle the happiness end of things. It would also require building a second building (City Council, Town Hall, Mayor's Office, etc), which would replace the Provisional Council and have 0 maintenance, thus removing the financial end of conquest penalties.

 

[Ahriman]

So there need to be some negative aspects but they should be things like huge diplomatic penalties, localized revolts (potentially massive for massive cities) during the razing, destruction/pillaging of map improvements, or bonuses and the mobilization of free units in the attacked empire representing rallying refugees and citizens volunteering to help out against those who have so wronged them. But what should not happen is all growth and production empire wide coming to a screeching halt because my military is continuing to carry out military operations, only vastly easier now because the other side isn't armed...

The problem I have with these kinds of proposals is that none of them really cost you anything or act as a significant break on expansion.
A few rebel or enemy units tends to just mean you have a source to milk for experience.
Diplomatic penalties don't really cost you much, particularly if you're already warmongering.
Destroying improvements doesn't hurt you because you're destroying the city anyway, so why would you care about the improvements?

There has to be some kind of check that stops you from just going and burning down the enemy empire all at once given that you have defeated their military. Happiness seems the best mechanism by far to make you only try to raze one city at a time.

As I mentioned earlier though, the idea of easier razing (maybe just do it faster, 2 per turn) or reduced resistance or something for autocracy seems fine to me. Put them into the police state policy.

But let's not pretend that using happiness to restrict burning cities to the ground is a reasonable or accurate mechanic. It is at very best a kludge.

Reasonable = works for gameplay purposes. So yes, I do think it is reasonable.

* * *

The puppet option should result in less unhappiness than it currently does, at perhaps a flat increased gold cost (add a 5-10gpt maintenance on the Governor).

Why flat? That just means that for a large city, puppeting becomes super-duper attractive.

Initial non-puppet occupation should result in the free building Provisional Council or Military Council. The council should require about 10gpt to maintain and would be pretty much the graphical representation of your empire's presence in the city.

You already get yield penalties in the city while occupied. I don't see a need for a gold penalty instead of happiness; if you want to spend gold to end unhappiness from occupation, you can already do that; buy the courthouse, or buy production buildings.

 

[EsoEs]

Honor should not be a big happiness-boosting tree in my opinion.

It shouldn't boost happiness your right, but the problem is happiness is THE artificial constraint on conquest that we have. So while it doesn't exactly make sense for honor to boost happiness, it does make sense for it to boost conquest i.e. happiness ><

There has to be some kind of check that stops you from just going and burning down the enemy empire all at once given that you have defeated their military. Happiness seems the best mechanism by far to make you only try to raze one city at a time.

I agree, but that check shouldnt be a skreeching handbreak, especially for civs with military policies. Lessen the check (a lot preferably) for conquesting civs, either through a wonder (not ideal) or policies or some other ingenious creation.

Edit: To clarify, if I build my civ specifically around conquering other civs, why should I not be allowed to do that? I forgo early science/gold/growth buildings in order to build my military for the express purpose of completely defeating another civs military. Why should I not be rewarded for having done so? This "check" on domination seems kind of contrived, why isn't there a "check" on growing huge cities and building tons of science and gold? Don't tell me its happiness, because we all know peaceful builder civs are NOT going to have big problems with happiness if you do it right.

 

[Thalassicus]

To do a percentage modifier to puppet I must add a stackable building to the city. Any idea for a name? Right now it's just called the "puppet modifier."

 

[Makaze]

The problem I have with these kinds of proposals is that none of them really cost you anything or act as a significant break on expansion.

It's all a matter of scale.

Do 1 or 2 rebels when razing make a difference? No, not really. Do 3-4 per turn? Probably. Same with free units. If they're essentially given a replacement army then

Do standard diplomatic penalties make a difference? Maybe, maybe not. I generally only like fighting one guy at a time or opportunistically jumping in when they're engaged against someone else. If the penalty is sufficient to force a war declaration from civs with certain philosophies or allow existing enemies to declare peace and potentially even jump in against you then it may.

Destroying improvements is admittedly a minor thing, just threw it in there to represent the wholesale destruction of all infrastructure, not just the city itself.

I also don't see an issue with a civilization with sufficiently overpowering military resources might being able to burn down a weaker neighbor. If it's too easy then we're not requiring the right level of allocated military power or allowing for too high a buildup.

Reasonable = works for gameplay purposes. So yes, I do think it is reasonable.

Reasonable = more than just gameplay. We could put a completely and utterly arbitrary timer on things and say you can only raze a city once every 50 turns. That would satisfy your requirement to slow things down and might even work out OK gameplay wise. But it doesn't fit within the context of the game and there is no way to adjust your playstyle to compensate for said restriction. And so it would not be reasonable, just as I feel that to a lesser degree the current system is also not reasonable.

The key point is that razing a city is conceptually a military matter and should largely have military problems associated with it. Restricting it with happiness which is a measure of civil order doesn't make sense. While it may be effective, other equally effective but conceptually better alternatives can be found. There is some level of penalties or requirements that tax military resources to make razing cities still difficult while also not throwing concept out the window and making the destruction of large cities result in a multi-turn empire wide depression out of proportion to the benefits gained.