Armies

[Txurce]

Well, a yield nerf does this in my mind. -30% production, gold and culture is a pretty big hit.

I take your point that stopping them constructing culture buildings isn't a bad backup option though.

A general yield nerf is what I advocated earlier, too. I got the sense that it's not easy to do... but maybe the dialogue of the last couple of days has inspired our mathematicians.

 

[Thalassicus]

One point to make... like a long balloon, squeezing out culture will boost science and production, since the puppet will still be building stuff.

What bothers me most about war in Civ V isn't gold or culture, but the incredible rate a planet-conquerer's research can go at. It doesn't make sense for a large army to also benefit from a tech lead.

 

[Txurce]

\I see a problem that's been overlooked. Like a long balloon, squeezing out culture will boost science and production, since the puppet will still be building stuff.

What bothers me most about war in Civ V isn't really gold or culture, but the incredible rate a planet-conquerer's research can go at. It doesn't make sense for a large army to also benefit from a tech lead.

That's why we were talking about a general nerf to puppet states, rather than just culture (even though culture victories are where they are most exploited). Is this possible?

 

[Thalassicus]

Possible... in theory going with the difficult method is better, but if I take that approach with everything... well, you get the idea. I wouldn't get anything done.

What matters more is issues of limited build queues... hmm... will think it all over for a while.

 

[Txurce]

Possible... in theory going with the difficult method is better, but if I take that approach with everything... well, you get the idea. I wouldn't get anything done.

What matters more is issues of limited build queues... hmm... will think it all over for a while.

Given the size of the problem, I'd be happy with the cheap, fast version!

 

[Seek]

One point to make... like a long balloon, squeezing out culture will boost science and production, since the puppet will still be building stuff.

What bothers me most about war in Civ V isn't gold or culture, but the incredible rate a planet-conquerer's research can go at. It doesn't make sense for a large army to also benefit from a tech lead.

What, if any, variables are there that could approximate some sort of war-weariness? A large empire should have a decent tech rate, but atm there is nothing to stop the successful warmonger from simply continuing on from civ to civ. Nerfing puppets is an excellent place to start, but I think some extended warring penalty would be a more fundamental solution.

 

[Ahriman]

What, if any, variables are there that could approximate some sort of war-weariness? A large empire should have a decent tech rate, but atm there is nothing to stop the successful warmonger from simply continuing on from civ to civ.

The right solution IMO is happiness tweaks. I'd strongly oppose adding a new mechanic.

Each time a conqueror takes a new city they have to either puppet, annex or raze.
All of these add happiness hits, and unhappiness eventually leads to military penalties and uprisings.

If you think sustained conquest is too easy, then IMO the right mechanisms to follow are:
a) Increased unhappiness while razing
b) Unhappiness penalty while annexed/puppeted city is in "disorder".
c) Longer length of disorder
d) If necessary, larger/more continuous penalties to severe unhappiness (as opposed to discrete penalties at -1 and -10).

 

[Polycrates]

What, if any, variables are there that could approximate some sort of war-weariness? A large empire should have a decent tech rate, but atm there is nothing to stop the successful warmonger from simply continuing on from civ to civ. Nerfing puppets is an excellent place to start, but I think some extended warring penalty would be a more fundamental solution.

Just brainstorming here, but I think it might be possible to (begin to) approach the problem without adding whole new mechanics. I haven't actually played it (fantastic ideas but a bit too far from vanilla for my taste), but reading through the thread for Alpaca's mod gave some interesting insight. The various changes effectively make units more expendable, and the sheer cost for an aggressor to replace the lost units effectively makes you want to get out of war because your empire is suffering too much. I'm speaking from ignorance here though, so Alpaca or anyone familiar with the mod, please pull me up if I'm way off base.

The quote that was of most interest was this:

A little more feedback from my 'no unit upgrades' testing. It is brutally difficult to build infrastructure while being at war. I have to constantly be producing new units and those units are not heavily promoted so they tend to die much more than usual. Also since my army regularly consists of half units that are below current tech levels it is extremely difficult to steamroll the AI, even with good tactics. When a longswordsman attacks my swordsman he dies, even though I do have a longswordsman myself nearby.

This leads to the situation that constant war is *harsh*. You will be devoting tons of production or cash to producing new units and your economy will suffer tremendously. In peacetime you can live with a smaller army that is more outdated and get your infrastructure going again, but the old strategy of constant warfare combined with excellent infrastructure is completely impossible. I was definitely able to make war profitable a lot of the time but taking over an enemy civ or just snagging a few border cities was costly to attempt and disastrous if the attack failed. Maintaining a two front war would be catastrophic.

I personally love it. War, instead of being a source of experienced soldiers and golden ages through redundant GGs, is a huge drain on your economy. It is really good to get back to peace as soon as possible if your war is going nowhere fast.

Anyway, I think the main thing I took out of that as a useful change is increasing the ability for a (player) aggressor's units to be killed/rendered useless in the short-medium term. So that an aggressor is required to keep pumping out units to keep pressing an invasion forward, until the point where the grind on the economy outweighs the gain of territory. How to do this effectively is the million dollar question!

The no upgrades/making units cheap approach is interesting but I'm not sure it's the solution; for one thing it kind of promotes having a lot of extra obsolete units around, which is not great with 1UPT - and the intention with 1UPT seems to me to have been to have armies consisting of relatively few units (eg 10 units or less) at any given time to prevent clogging the map with units and still allow tactical maneuvering.

So it seems you might want small armies (which does imply expensive units with long build times) but at the same time you want a defending civ to be able to produce more units as the invasion goes on (which implies cheaper units that can be produced as the war is ongoing).

Healing seems to me like it could be one place to hit. Cut down healing on the offensive, and you have more attacking units dying or at least being so badly damaged that they have to retreat for ages and be replaced by reserves. Alpaca doubled HP for one thing - that's a really interesting approach but I suspect it might take the vanilla feel away from the battles themselves.
I think one approach might be in reducing the healing ability of newly-conquered cities. Currently, you assault a city, your units get hurt a bit, then you take it (and its borders) and heal for a couple of turns then do the same thing again with a refreshed army that even has an extra promotion or two.
This may have other associated problems, but if (for example) a city still in unrest exerted no cultural radius (thus not allowing faster healing or the "within borders" bonuses) and only gave very slow healing in the city itself.
That way, it's harder for a unit in enemy territory to find somewhere to effectively heal back up.
Of course a stronger AI that can take advantage of opportunities to take weakened units (especially promoted ones) out of the picture would be ideal, but I should stop dreaming

Maintenance is another approach; if you can build your army quickly, but can only have e.g. 10 units at a time because of crippling maintenance costs, that seems to "solve" the dilemma. The problem is that it's insanely hard to balance out, not to mention making the AI use it properly. Not sure whether this is a useful tool for this sort of balance or not. Limited strategic resources are great for this though; at least you can only have a limited number of elite units at once, no matter how cheap they might be to produce.

Another aspect might be to tone down promotion a little - make the really powerful ones come later/increase the xp requirements for each higher experience level or something. I also noticed you've now got Siege as a level I promotion, and I'm not sure whether that helps or hinders, since it means any old melee unit that comes fresh from a barracks with one promo can effectively bash itself against a city.

Another idea might be to have extra unhappiness in conquered cities while you're still at war with the former owner - incentive to make peace and get it back under control? Not 100% convinced I like this idea though...

Anyway these are only guesses at the mechanics to fix it, but I think maybe there's something to be done with these sorts of factors to make continued war really unpalatable for the conqueror before adding whole new mechanics.

EDIT: I also like Ahriman's ideas around unhappiness with conquest. That -33% combat penalty is pretty ugly...

 

[V. Soma]

I played 3 games with Alpaca's PWM, so I try to put in my thoughts here

The no upgrades/making units cheap approach is interesting but I'm not sure it's the solution; for one thing it kind of promotes having a lot of extra obsolete units around

As I had no chance to upgrade I always tried to keep a sanding army of the best possible units trained - just in case a civ DoW me or I want to move into war action sadly the AI doesn't so so, it often has obsolate units at start of war, which is big mistake for the AI in this mod setting...

the intention with 1UPT seems to me to have been to have armies consisting of relatively few units

There is maint. cost you can play with in setting balance. Alpaca does try so - you will have to pay a lot for a big army to keep it.

So it seems you might want small armies (which does imply expensive units with long build times) but at the same time you want a defending civ to be able to produce more units

Defender can have terrain advance (homeland bonus), plus he can move units quicker to the front (better supply)

Alpaca doubled HP for one thing - that's a really interesting approach but I suspect it might take the vanilla feel away from the battles themselves.

With 20 HP battles take longer but I like that, it feels like units are divisions, really.
And the 20HP goes well with no insta-heal possible and the real slow heal - you have to re-supply your army by sending new boys from home...
it makes attacker a pain if wandering too far from home...

 

[Ahriman]

I tend to think that Alpaca's warfare changes are too extreme to fit in a balance mod.
Its a need thing to try, but it totally changes core play of the entire game, and its very hard to balance and get the AI to understand.

Its cool for a standalone mod or total conversion, but I'd recommend we look for less intrusive changes here.

 

[Txurce]

The right solution IMO is happiness tweaks.

Each time a conqueror takes a new city they have to either puppet, annex or raze.
All of these add happiness hits, and unhappiness eventually leads to military penalties and uprisings.

This is a sweeping solution and therefore promising, like nerfing every aspect of a puppet city. The downside I see to increasing unhappiness with conquest is that presently there may not be enough happiness counters to make having a huge empire viable. That's the upside of a general puppet city nerf. It allows warmongers to play as they do, but not to take advantage of puppets' unbalanced contributions. Conceptually I prefer this to "balancing" the puppets' OP contributions with happiness hits, which in my eyes had too much of an apples-and-oranges aspect to be likely to work right.

 

[V. Soma]

I tend to think that Alpaca's warfare changes are too extreme to fit in a balance mod.
Its a need thing to try, but it totally changes core play of the entire game, and its very hard to balance and get the AI to understand.

Its cool for a standalone mod or total conversion, but I'd recommend we look for less intrusive changes here.

I just wanted to reflect on things...

Maybe experience with PWM helps to balance the war-system of the vanilla version

 

[alpaca]

I tend to think that Alpaca's warfare changes are too extreme to fit in a balance mod.
Its a need thing to try, but it totally changes core play of the entire game, and its very hard to balance and get the AI to understand.

Its cool for a standalone mod or total conversion, but I'd recommend we look for less intrusive changes here.

Actually, I agree with this assessment. It goes well beyond rebalancing, and therefore probably has no place in BC. That doesn't mean looking at my changes can't give you ideas about what to do in a balance mod, though.

Anyways, as for the upgrades: Removing them completely was more of a test run than something I would like to stay in the mod forever. It's a blunt instrument approach I'm not actually very fond of, but I felt it was important to see what it does to gameplay. In the next version, I will instead simply have more expensive upgrades.

I have two aims: The player should only keep veteran units around, and the extremely powerful "upgrade all your units the turn you research a new techs" strategy should be nerfed. The former can be achieved by making upgrades so expensive that producing new units is more efficient (but not so expensive that it's cheaper to directly purchase a new unit), the latter by adding some kind of cap to upgrades (for example one unit every two turns). I'm also planning to wipe promotions and add an XP penalty to upgrading in order to make having a hardcore veteran army throughout the game more difficult.

In an ideal world, I would switch upgrading and healing units to be city builds rather than automatically and paid with money, respectively. But no dice without DLL access.

Re puppets: You could give them a modifiers by spawning a building via script. Maybe -50% culture and -25% science and gold. I would keep production intact for flavor reasons - ideally the culture would be unchanged for border expansion but not contribute to SPs, which could be scripted with some effort. This would provide some incentive to annexing them but not so much that keeping puppets is always the wrong choice.

 

[Txurce]

Re puppets: You could give them a modifiers by spawning a building via script. Maybe -50% culture and -25% science and gold. I would keep production intact for flavor reasons - ideally the culture would be unchanged for border expansion but not contribute to SPs, which could be scripted with some effort. This would provide some incentive to annexing them but not so much that keeping puppets is always the wrong choice.

This is the sort of "big knife" approach I favor (as opposed to blunt instruments or tweezers). It would be nice to not affect cultural borders, but I could live with less expansion there if the modding becomes prohibitively difficult.

 

[Seek]

The right solution IMO is happiness tweaks. I'd strongly oppose adding a new mechanic.

Each time a conqueror takes a new city they have to either puppet, annex or raze.
All of these add happiness hits, and unhappiness eventually leads to military penalties and uprisings.

If you think sustained conquest is too easy, then IMO the right mechanisms to follow are:
a) Increased unhappiness while razing
b) Unhappiness penalty while annexed/puppeted city is in "disorder".
c) Longer length of disorder
d) If necessary, larger/more continuous penalties to severe unhappiness (as opposed to discrete penalties at -1 and -10).

This is a direction I'm not opposed to, it just seems like a flat science and/or production nerf while at war would be simpler and cleaner. It's not like the idea has no precedence in the Civ series, I think if anything it would intuitively make sense for a lot of people, and some of the options you and Polycrates mention may not be. I think we can all agree that we don't want a conquest nerf to be punitive, and I've found it can be frustrating waiting for a city to come out of revolt with vanilla values.

So I guess my question is, why the opposition to a new mechanic? If it's possible to change one intuitive thing - rather than four things that might not be immediately apparent - to reach our goals, shouldn't that be optimal? (Again, I want to reiterate that the list above would work well and I am not fundamentally opposed to it, particularly with a general puppet nerf and more expensive upgrades. I'm simply curious.)

 

[antdog]

Currently Musketmen are weaker than Longswordsmen. Do you think increasing Musketmen strength makes sense here?

 

[Txurce]

Currently Musketmen are weaker than Longswordsmen. Do you think increasing Musketmen strength makes sense here?

This is because longswordmen require iron, and muskets don't. Also, muskets were considered weaker than bows and crossbows historically for quite a while.

 

[Ahriman]

The downside I see to increasing unhappiness with conquest is that presently there may not be enough happiness counters to make having a huge empire viable

I don't think a huge empire *should* be viable without the infrastructure to support it.

That's precisely the objective of what we're trying to achieve; making is so that conquest alone can't win you a huge empire, you have to slow down and build the infrastructure to support it - and research the techs that support that infrastructure.
The only way that its going to be important to research the tech that gives theaters, for example, is if you can't expand as much without that tech, and access to that building.

If you (general, untargeted "you") think a huge empire should be viable even without infrastructure, then I don't see how you can think that conquest is too strong and should be limited.

Conceptually I prefer this to "balancing" the puppets' OP contributions with happiness hits, which in my eyes had too much of an apples-and-oranges aspect to be likely to work right.

I think I may have been unclear; I've been doing that a lot lately it seems.
When I say "puppet gives you a happiness hit" I just meant the regular 2+ 1 per pop that you get from any city - and the puppet probably won't have many happiness buildings (often lost during conquest).

What I meant was: even in vanilla, every time you capture a city you get unhappiness. So this mechanism already exists; even in vanilla, conquering is limited and controlled through happiness.
So, stick with that.

So I prefer a puppet yield nerf *combined with some of the a), b) c) d) options I gave.

That way, when conquering you either get happiness-inefficient-puppets (because they are 1 unhappiness per pop but give yields only 0.7 as good) or big short-term happiness hits from razing or annexing.

You could give them a modifiers by spawning a building via script. Maybe -50% culture and -25% science and gold.

Right, this is exactly what I have in mind. And then the building gets removed on city conquest or annexation.
Leaving production seems reasonable.

it just seems like a flat science and/or production nerf while at war would

I don't really like this.
It punishes the AI, hard, who often gets involved in long-distance wars with no conquest. It gives weird impacts, in that you get a big penalty even if you're the might british empire squashing some tiny backwards civ on the other side of the world.
And its also highly unrealistic. Often major (applied) technological advances have been made in wartime. It tends to concentrate the mind. And it treats all wars the same, even wars that aren't total wars.

It's not like the idea has no precedence in the Civ series

What is the Civ series precedent for a direct research or hammer nerf while at war?

So I guess my question is, why the opposition to a new mechanic? If it's possible to change one intuitive thing - rather than four things that might not be immediately apparent - to reach our goals, shouldn't that be optimal?

I'd argue that going through happiness and the kinds of changes I'm talking about would be much more apparent, and intuitive, than a new mechanic.
I don't see anything very intuitive about why my hammer production of units should *fall* during wartime, or why my research towards superior tanks should be slowed, or why I get punished simply from having war declared, even if no fighting is going on.

 

[Txurce]

I don't think a huge empire *should* be viable without the infrastructure to support it...

I prefer a puppet yield nerf *combined with some of the a), b) c) d) options I gave.

My point is that a huge enough empire doesn't have enough unhappiness counters available to it, were unhappiness to be the only nerf to puppeting. I agree with some version of your summary conclusion above, which combines a broad puppet yield nerf with some happiness hits for expansion.

 

[Ahriman]

My point is that a huge enough empire doesn't have enough unhappiness counters available to it

I don't think I quite understand this sorry. They can always construct more happiness buildings, or research the tech for the next tier happiness building, or trade for more luxuries through diplomacy or via city state (unless they have them all), or stop growing their cities so much, or raze some cities, or sell them, or focus their social policies on happiness ones.

Yes, eventually at the top of the tech-tree and once you have stadiums in every city there is a cap, but I still don't see this as a problem.