Balancing citystates: ignore/capture/alliance

[orangecape]

Militaristic CSs do in fact build XP buildings, fairly regularly actually. I often find I get units from them with 15 or 30 XP, but never more than that. Not sure if that is just a sampling limitation or if they never build Military Academies.

As far as what I would want from them: If we want Militaristic to be worth the same as the others we need a way around the range restriction. Cultural and Maritime work fine if they are on an island, or on the opposite side of my opponent's empire. This has often been decried as senseless, but I don't think there is any useful way around it. To equalize Militaristic CS contribution I think they need to have their units appear in the player's territory. Appearing at the capital makes sense, but using the capital's XP buildings seems like it would make it really necessary to have XP buildings in the capital and not nearly as much use elsewhere, which I don't like as much.

My preference would ideally be to have the units appear in the capital with XP based on era. Something like Medieval = 15 XP, Renaissance = 30 XP, Industrial = 45 XP, Modern = 60 XP. That is obviously a rough sketch, but it would mean that the units appearing would have enough experience to be comparable to ones produced in a decent training production city. You would probably want to have them use the XP values for the XP buildings but I forget right now what values Thal is using for those. I am not sure how easy building this sort of structure in would be, but if it would be a real pain then just basing the unit XP off the buildings in the capital would be a good compromise, and *much* better than the current situation.

 

[Thalassicus]

It would actually be a very simple task to vary the XP based on era or other factors, we basically have unlimited potential here since I'm going to be nullifying the default variables and coding everything manually.

Here's another question... how would yall prefer to balance Maritime city-states:

• Change the flat modifier to a percentage bonus.
• Limit the flat modifier to a finite number of cities.

If you prefer B, would you rather limit it to the biggest X cities (like Representation in Civ 4) or smallest X cities (so it helps new cities more)?

Also, would cultural city-states be more fun if the culture was split among the empire's cities themselves?

 

[Seek]

Here's another question... how would yall prefer to balance Maritime city-states:

• Change the flat modifier to a percentage bonus.
• Limit the flat modifier to a finite number of cities.

If you prefer B, then would you rather limit it to the biggest X cities (like Representation in Civ 4) or smallest X cities (so it helps new cities like Hydroponics Labs in Alpha Centauri)?

This may be beyond the scope of the mod, but I'd like the whole CS system to be a caravan system. Immediate benefits:

• Balance: Maritime and Cultural would be much easier to balance against Militaristic and each other.
• Realism: Makes proximity important; as Ahriman noted, with the bonuses to CS capture it might be most efficient to take close CSs and ally distant ones, which makes no sense. You'd also need to protect the trade routes from the CSs so that the caravans don't get sniped.

So if Maritime CSs gave a food caravan every X turns it could be sent to whatever city you want - boost a newly founded city or make the cap a megacity. Same for culture: Have a lot of culture multipliers in one city? Send the caravan there. Need that new city to claim tiles before your opponent gets them? Send the caravan there.

I think this would lead to a more interesting game.

 

[Thalassicus]

Since that's something which wouldn't be automated and there's no existing mechanic, it wouldn't be possible to get the AI to do it.

In theory though...

Instead of Civ 2 caravans, what about Alpha Centauri supply crawlers? Basically each Maritime citystate would give 1 food unit, Cultural one cultural unit, etc. When stationed in a city and issued the supply order, it would increase that city's food/culture/etc per turn by X. I do feel SMAC's supply crawlers were an improvement over Civ2's caravans because the latter tended to result in a lot of tedious micro. Both of them transformed into great people in later Civ's.

 

[Seek]

Since that's something which wouldn't be automated and there's no existing mechanic, it wouldn't be possible to get the AI to do it.

In theory though...

Instead of Civ 2 caravans, what about Alpha Centauri supply crawlers? Basically each Maritime citystate would give 1 food unit, Cultural one cultural unit, etc. When stationed in a city and issued the supply order, it would increase that city's food/culture/etc per turn by X. I do feel SMAC's supply crawlers were an improvement over Civ2's caravans because the latter tended to result in a lot of tedious micro. Both of them transformed into great people in later Civ's.

That's a shame..
I haven't played civ2 in a dozen years, and SMAC not at all, so I don't speak with authority here, but the supply crawler idea seems kind of odd. I see your point about caravan micro, though imo civ5 wouldn't be lessened with a little more of it: people complain that there's nothing to do a lot of the time with vanilla, and I quite enjoy the micro from Diplomats in City-State Diplomacy. Anyway, just something to think about!



To actually answer your query regarding Maritimes, at the moment I think option A, the % modifier, is best. Option B could be viable if there would be a method to choose which cities get the food whenever you want, but that doesn't seem like it's a possibility(?). If it is, then I'd support B!

Culture flowing through cities sounds like a good idea now that there are more % modifiers available - could maybe even nerf Cultural CSs in that case, to reward those investing in culture more.

 

[rhammer640]

I would be in favor of option B for maritime CSs. With the food going to the largest cities as those are usually the ones that could use the extra food.

I would be in favor of the culture going to the actual cities, would make it a bit more interesting rather then just another number.

 

[Seek]

Yeah, tbh I'm torn between option A and B. Possible to have two betas so we could try them both out?

 

[Kirschi]

I would prefer option A. And even if you choose option B, I hope you consider that those split bonuses add up again and go to your capital if you have only one or maybe two cities (as I often have )

And I'm not sure about that crawler or caravan theory. It would have the same problem as with militaristic CS giving units on the other side of the world. Except of course, those Units spawn in your territory, but then it wouldn't make any sense

 

[rhammer640]

I would prefer option A. And even if you choose option B, I hope you consider that those split bonuses add up again and go to your capital if you have only one or maybe two cities (as I often have )

And I'm not sure about that crawler or caravan theory. It would have the same problem as with militaristic CS giving units on the other side of the world. Except of course, those Units spawn in your territory, but then it wouldn't make any sense

Well i think you might be in the minority by only having one or two cities, not that that means your opinion doesn't count but i just think option A wouldn't end up doing that for most of us, i know it never would for me, lol

The caravan theory was in part a carry-over from an earlier discussion on the CSD mod thread. In that context where you need to send diplomatic units to the city state to get influence instead of buying it, you tend to befriend those close to you so the unit spawning across the world never really happens (or not often and if it does it just adds to the difficulty and decision making which i like).

On a side note, Gazebo just made a mod which adds caravan like units that you can build to transfer half of their build cost to another city and said that the AI could use them so maybe the cause isn't so hopeless after all, lol.

 

[Seek]

And I'm not sure about that crawler or caravan theory. It would have the same problem as with militaristic CS giving units on the other side of the world. Except of course, those Units spawn in your territory, but then it wouldn't make any sense

The way it is now doesn't make any sense. To me at least.. It's not realistic to expect to ally with a city-state thousands of miles away in the ancient, classical or medieval eras which then magically transports a tremendous amount of goods to your empire without some sort of trade network. As time goes on into later eras, it could be more feasible to associate with more distant countries.

Another, much simpler way to achieve this would be to simply add a modifier to CS influence: The closer the CS is to your borders, the less it costs for influence. (Another modifier I'd like to see is a modifier dependent on number of turns at ally status, making it harder for other civs to steal them away. This would make a big difference to the diplo strategy and victory.) Unfortunately this option is not possible with the current tools, hopefully they will be explored when the full sdk comes out. In the meantime, my above suggestion seems like it would be realistic to implement.

 

[Ahriman]

Change the flat modifier to a percentage bonus.
Limit the flat modifier to a finite number of cities.
If you prefer B, would you rather limit it to the biggest X cities (like Representation in Civ 4) or smallest X cities (so it helps new cities more)?

I think I'd go with B, biggest cities (where the effect loops, so if its your biggest 6 cities and I only have 3 cities, then each city gets twice the bonus).
A percentage bonus still means that the ability gets more powerful the more cities you have, which is what makes it so hard to balance.

New cities with free food grow far too fast, and it makes more logical/realistic sense as well that you'd be feeding the big cities.

The only advantage for A is that it makes MCS a complement for existing food income from other sources, not a subsitute. So you're still rewarded for having grasslands. Option B (like the current method) tends to exacerbate the bonus to plains over grasslands.

Another, much simpler way to achieve this would be to simply add a modifier to CS influence: The closer the CS is to your borders, the less it costs for influence.

So if Maritime CSs gave a food caravan every X turns

Sounds like tedious MM - like the Civ2 caravan. Getting rid of that and going to automated trade routes was a big improvement.

though imo civ5 wouldn't be lessened with a little more of it: people complain that there's nothing to do a lot of the time with vanilla

MM is only fun when its interesting or allows more options. MM that doesn't have interesting options is not fun.
Adding MM for the sake of "something to do" is poor design, IMO.

Another, much simpler way to achieve this would be to simply add a modifier to CS influence: The closer the CS is to your borders, the less it costs for influence.

This also sounds not-fun.
Mechanic changes solely for the sake of realism are seldom an improvement.
I have no gameplay problem with getting the same bonuses from a far-away CS as a close one.

 

[Seek]

I find diplo victories in vanilla very not-fun. I do find some semblance of realism fun. I find empire management in Civ games fun, and civ5 is lacking in this department, imo. To each their own, I suppose we have different visions.

 

[Seek]

@Ahriman: Thinking about this some more, I wanted to mention that in both cases where you claim it's "just for the sake of X" are mistaken. The goals for everyone here is for a good game that's fun to play - the ideas I suggested are "just for the sake" of making Civ5 with the Balance mods more fun. Thus the above paragraph. (By the way, I find with the Balance mods that there is much less down-time than vanilla.)

For me what's most interesting about games in general is tradeoffs and risk/benefit. In this case, it's risky to ally with a distant CS because it could more easily be taken from you. If the other modifier (making a CS with a long alliance harder for another civ to out-bid you) were implemented, you could gain from having an early alliance that the civ closer to the CS neglected. In essence, this is strategy; the diplo victory would require foresight and early action rather than simply massing gold to spend the turn before the UN vote.

If it does turn out that the micro involved is tedious or that efforts to make the game more consistent with reality decrease the enjoyability, then so be it - I have no personal attachment to it, I just think it would be fun.

 

[Ahriman]

In this case, it's risky to ally with a distant CS because it could more easily be taken from you

Yes, that is an interesting distinction, but its one that is easy to see just by looking at the map.

Some differential efficiency of turning gold into CS influence is a much less intuitive, and its something that you couldn't see without specifically going into the CS diplomacy screen for each city and figuring out the exact relative ratios.

Its also not necessarily very realistic; that distant CS on the coast might take a few weeks to sail to, but that nearby CS on the other side of the impenetrable mountain chain might take many months to get to by land.

As to the Caravan idea, that doesn't really seem fun to me, because its not like there is anything you could do with the caravan except send it to one of your cities. There's no particular interesting strategic decision (I don't find "which city should I send this bonus to" to be all that interesting) and so it doesn't seem like the feature would be worth the added busywork.
Just like I didn't enjoy the caravan mechanic in Civ2, and preferred the automatic trade route mechanism.
An MCS that automatically gives you food is more fun for me than having to maneuver a "food caravan" unit around. Manually carting supplies around is seldom much fun.

[Ideally I would like to see a trade route mechanism something like that in Empire: Total War, where there are defined, very profitable naval trade routes that actually appear on the map linking cities, but could have their yield reduced or negated by enemy naval units sitting anywhere along the route. This would make navies more interesting in their ability to protect or disrupt commerce in a way that land units couldn't replicate, but it would still be a simple what-you-see-is-what-you-get thing, visible from the main screen. But thats way beyond this mod.]

Its totally something that reasonable people can differ on, preferencewise. Just stating my opinion for the record.

 

[rhammer640]

well the caravan idea is being explored by gazebo here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10179452#post10179452 he has made a mod that adds them in so if anyone is interested in trying it out they can. It doesn't change anything that would make it incompatible with this mod.

@ahriman
The reason i think it would be fun to have them is that it allows you to have some cities that maybe have little to no production but focus on gold production (for example) and if they need a bank or market they can have their research suplimented by caravans so it doesn't take forever. Also island cities could survive and actually produce stuff. They method that Gazebo used is kind of fun as well, linking the merchants to different resources to represent trade. \

Anyway, i think its a fun mechanic because it allows added choice in city development where not every city needs a ton of hammers. Also the AI can use it because it uses the GE mechanic.

 

[Thalassicus]

Shifting some conversation on citystates here... from the combined and beta discussion threads so it's easier to follow along with.


===================================

In v4.06 beta Maritime city-states now give total 2:5 (friend:ally) split among the largest 5 cities. When captured, looting all the food stores at once gives an immediate 5 population boom split among the largest 5 cities (1 each if you have five cities or more).

Here's some examples of how Maritime distributes food among the top 5 cities with priority to larger ones:

Three cities with 2 maritime allies.
5 pop : 4
4 pop : 3
2 pop : 3
---__--10

Four cities with 6 maritime allies.
9 pop : 8
9 pop : 8
9 pop : 7
4 pop : 7
---__--30

Seven cities with 3 maritime allies.
5 pop : 3
5 pop : 3
5 pop : 3
5 pop : 3
5 pop : 3
5 pop : 0
5 pop : 0
---__--15

So basically... food for the first five cities is slightly higher or the same as vanilla (though no special capital bonus), with no food to cities after that. These numbers are very easily adjustable, and I'll tweak things based on feedback.

===================================

The steps I created are:

1. Add up food reward from all maritime friends & allies.
2. Multiply by Siam's bonus.
3. Reduce -75% if empire is .
4. Round up.
5. Loop through cities to give food.

So for example if Siam has 3 allies and 1 friend in 'unhappy' mode with 3 total cities:

1. 5*3 + 2*1 = 17
2. 17 * 1.5 = 25.5
3. 25.5 * 0.25 = 6.375
4. Round up to 7.
5. Distribute 7 food to three cities:
   3
   2
   2

===================================

Five food per Maritime alliance is an incredible nerf, it seems to me. That's the food equivalent you get with *two cities* in vanilla! I haven't tested the new beta yet, but that's really low. I'd also think an extra food or two should always go to the capital. I think something like: 4/8 for friend/ally with a guaranteed +1/+2 always going to the capital regardless of size.

I considered 4/8, and might settle on that as a final value. I originally had it at 5/10 in early testing, which would result in a slight buff for empires of <7 cities, and a nerf for >7 cities and up. Basically it's a question of where we want the break-even point to be. The reason I nerfed it was from the feedback I've seen, people still prioritize maritimes higher than the others even at 1 food per city.

I could leave them strong and buff the others, however. I set things up so I can very easily do this sort of bonus-in-5-cities thing for anything in the game.

Great Artists or Cultural city-states could split among the top 5 culture-producing cities to buff them with super border expansion, for example. Or I could make Militaristic citystates give experience or a production bonus in the top 5 military production cities.

I can also vary the # of cities the bonus is applied to... these things are all stored in variables I designed for easy modification.

 

[Seek]

I considered 4/8, and might settle on that as a final value. The reason I nerfed it was from the feedback I've seen people still prioritize maritimes way higher than the others even at 1 per city.

I wasn't aware of that; I've found the balance among the different CSs to be quite balanced recently. With only 2/5 I'm not sure I'd bother to get maritimes unless extremely food-poor.

The fantastic thing about this is I set things up so I can do this sort of bonus-in-5-cities thing for anything in the game. It'd be very easy to give cultural citystates the same effect to buff them, for example (split the culture among top 5 culture-producing cities). Or I could make Militaristic citystates give experience for units built in the top 5 military production cities.

Interesting. Not sure if it would be necessary, though.

For Militaristic CSs, I think that would make them almost useless due to the situational nature - unless it was an additional effect to the unit spawn.

For Cultural, I feel like you've buffed culture a lot already and to have it go through cities (with their multipliers) may make them too strong. However, if their /turn was reduced a bit, this could be balanced.

*I still think that with the flat maritime food yields we have now, they should be manually distributable - so if you have 8 you can send it to whatever city needs it the most or split it among such cities. I think it would be more immersive and useful, assuming it's even possible.*

 

[Thalassicus]

Right, I'd reduce the effect if it went through cities. The advantage is cities only get a multiplier at the Opera House stage (and way down the end at broadcast towers), so it would improve the value of cultural citystates right about the point they start losing importance in vanilla.

Still I do agree cultural CSs are in rather nice shape right now, which is why I didn't do anything yet, as I move on to other priorities.

For militaristics I'd give them a split-among-cities effect in addition to their normal effect. I think most people feel they're the weakest of the three so it'd be a buff. This is one possible option them, and I'm open to ideas for more!

Player-controlled food distribution is not possible because there's no way to get the AI to do it. This is why most things I've done lately are semi-automated.

 

[Seek]

As a builder, I've recently been gunning for MilCSs frequently in my games. They're very useful because they save hammers.

So can MarCS's food be manually assigned? I hope you consider doing that.

 

[rhammer640]

I think maybe 4 and 7 might work or 4 and 8, but i definitely like the idea of limiting the amount, if for nothing else to make maritime's act in the same manor as the other two CS types (not scaling with civ size).

I think the culture splitting to cities might be nice. I like getting military units as is now, although maybe you get a unit at 'friends' and a unit with free exp at 'ally'.

Is it possible to add different cs types like a production based one that would send hammers to the lower 5 producing cities or something?