Balancing citystates: ignore/capture/alliance

[Ahriman]

There's four reasons why I dropped the population modifier

Removing the population modifier removes the majority of the complexity.
The design you have (without population modifiers) seems very reasonable to me.
I withdraw my objection.

 

[Txurce]

so are the amounts received half for 'friend' status?

Yes they are.

 

[rhammer640]

Yes they are.

Thanks, i missed thals post above that explained it all, lol.

 

[SSgtDuke]

Extra food to a city in resistance helps prevent starvation.

I feel a bit guilty about bringing this up without actual testing but won't this just delay starvation to when the city comes out of resistance and the food shipments drop from 200% to 100%? We can't build anything during resistance and I doubt it would be reasonable to start mass replacing the surrounding land with farms.

Do you remember my suggestion about dropping a captured city's population down to whatever it can support in its post-capture state? Is this not possible? Do you have to specify a fixed number of citizens that die during the capture?

 

[Ahriman]

I would prefer to keep the citizens and then have them starve down after resistance ends than to have them instantly lost when I capture the city.

In the former case, I could rapidly build more farms, repair pillaged farms, buy more tiles, reallocate tiles between cities, buy food producing buildings, buy MCS allies, etc. to prevent starvation.
In the latter I could do nothing.

I don't like the idea of a variable citizen loss from city capture depending on some value of "how many citizens the city can support" that may not be very close to the actual numbers of citizens that I could have it support when I got to micromanage.

*edit*
Plus, I think the large unhappiness hit from capturing a big city is a feature, not a bug. Conquest should be controlled through happiness.

 

[rhammer640]

I would prefer to keep the citizens and then have them starve down after resistance ends than to have them instantly lost when I capture the city.

In the former case, I could rapidly build more farms, repair pillaged farms, buy more tiles, reallocate tiles between cities, buy food producing buildings, buy MCS allies, etc. to prevent starvation.
In the latter I could do nothing.

I don't like the idea of a variable citizen loss from city capture depending on some value of "how many citizens the city can support" that may not be very close to the actual numbers of citizens that I could have it support when I got to micromanage.

I agree with this, id much rather be given the option to fix it even if its not feasible for me to do it every time. It at least keeps the choice there which i think could be the BC mod moto "more choice = better" lol

 

[Thalassicus]

Basically all three of you are right. It does delay the starvation, and as Ahriman and rhammer640 point out, that delay gives the player more time to react to the situation.

It's not much of a delay though: since all non-razing cities in resistance are puppets, they get both the 2x and 0.5x multipliers, combining to 1x. Basically cities in resistance act as a normal or occupied city for MCS purposes through the duration of the resistance. After the resistance ends, if we annex the city it still has a 100% modifier. Even if we choose to keep it as a puppet and the modifier drops to half, we at least got a few extra turns to deal with the situation.

If the starvation is particularly bad we also have the option of annexing the city while it's in resistance, thus giving the full 2x modifier, though annexing early does have the significant downside of extra turns of the unhappiness penalty. A better option would probably be to set lots of cities on avoid growth to funnel extra food to the starving city.

 

[rcspring]

Thalassicus i was wondering if you were still planning to change it so units gifted to you by a militaristic SC spawn in your cities?

 

[Thalassicus]

Yeah I want to at least try that out, so militaristic rewards are a little more consistent with the others.

 

[SSgtDuke]

Would be nice if CS-gifted great people also showed up at your nearest city.

 

[Ahriman]

Would be nice if CS-gifted great people also showed up at your nearest city.

Well, except Great Merchants....

 

[rhammer640]

I'm still a fan of having the units spawn in the CS because it is one of the only things (barring the CS diplomacy mod) that makes the proximity of the CS to your civ important, but thats just my own personal opinion

 

[Thalassicus]

To be honest where militaristic units spawn is something I don't feel strongly about one way or the other. I don't think it would significantly influence my decision-making.

However! I've been thinking about a way to make them more reliable... what if they always gave the strongest resourceless unit instead of a random one? Three 0xp Scouts in a row is just horrible.

Another possibility is to make the gifted unit's XP more reliable. Right now it's sorta random, depending on the CS running out of other things to build (requires a slow global research pace). The units do start with XP if the CS happens to build those military buildings. Just brainstorming off the top of my head, instead of relying on this random-ish chance the XP could be a set per-era amount like:

Militaristic:
00 Ancient
10 Classical
20 Medieval
30 Renaissance
40 Industrial
50 Modern
60 Future

In comparison, here's player-built units:
15 Barracks
35 Barracks + Armory
60 Barracks + Armory + Academy

So basically the units from a militaristic citystate would be resourceless and lower-xp than homebuilt units, but more reliable than the randomness of the vanilla system.

 

[Txurce]

To be honest where militaristic units spawn is something I don't feel strongly about one way or the other. I don't think it would significantly influence my decision-making.

However! I've been thinking about a way to make them more reliable... what if they always gave the strongest resourceless unit instead of a random one? Three Scouts in a row is just horrible when we're in the Renaissance era.

Another possibility is to make the gifted unit's XP more reliable. Right now it's sorta random, depending on the CS running out of other things to build (slow global research pace). The units do start with XP if the CS happened to build those buildings. Just brainstorming off the top of my head, instead of relying on this random-ish chance the XP could be a fixed:

Militaristic:
00 Ancient
10 Classical
20 Medieval
30 Renaissance
40 Industrial
50 Modern
60 Future

In comparison, here's player-built units:
15 Barracks
35 Barracks + Armory
60 Barracks + Armory + Academy

So basically the units from a militaristic citystate would be resourceless and lower-xp than homebuilt units, but more reliable than the randomness of the vanilla system.

All of this will make it a better game for the player, and it will prove equally helpful for the AI.

 

[SSgtDuke]

what if they always gave the strongest resourceless unit instead of a random one?

I would generally want to receive a resource-using unit if I have the resource available. I'm often annoyed when I receive an archer or a spearman when I could have used a longswordsman.

 

[Ahriman]

what if they always gave the strongest resourceless unit instead of a random one?

Define "strongest"?
Would that mean no more ranged units? Its very nice when you get a cannon or artillery so it would be a bit lame if you never got one of those, but it would be overpowered if you got one of those every time.
What might be nice is if they gave you resource-requiring units only if its a resource they're providing to you. Makes more logical sense too; a military civ near horses give you cavalry, a military civ near oil gives you tanks.

In terms of the possibility of getting a weak unit, how about something where they can't give you a unit that has a hammer cost less than say 50% of the most expensive unit that they could offer you?

I like the idea of XP adjustments depending on era. Thats a good call.

 

[Txurce]

I like the idea of a CS giving units based on local resources, and resourceless ones if there aren't any. If this is too hard to execute, then why not make it the strongest possible unit? In other words, a resourced one if the player has the resource available, a resourceless one otherwise.

Comparing ranged units to melee is also tricky in this regard, although you could measure with hit points.

Since what we're really trying to avoid is getting scouts, is there a way to exclude them altogether?

 

[Sneaks]

Actually, the solution I have found myself loving the most is combining some of the UI from Gedemon's Mercenaries mod with the power.

Basically, once friends with a Militaristic CS, there would be a menu in the CS screen giving you an option of 4 basic units: siege, melee, range, mounted. The one you choose is what they provide. Some options would be unavailable if that CS lacked the necessary resources.

 

[Txurce]

Actually, the solution I have found myself loving the most is combining some of the UI from Gedemon's Mercenaries mod with the power.

Basically, once friends with a Militaristic CS, there would be a menu in the CS screen giving you an option of 4 basic units: siege, melee, range, mounted. The one you choose is what they provide. Some options would be unavailable if that CS lacked the necessary resources.

I had forgotten about this mod. I have it bookmarked but haven't had a chance to play lately. The mod itself sounds fantastic, and it would be great if it could be incorporated into TBC suite. But the idea of a military CS offering a choice pretty much trumps every other proposal. What's not to like about this?

 

[Ahriman]

Comparing ranged units to melee is also tricky in this regard, although you could measure with hit points.

Every unit has 10 hitpoints?

Since what we're really trying to avoid is getting scouts, is there a way to exclude them altogether?

That would be fine.

But the idea of a military CS offering a choice pretty much trumps every other proposal. What's not to like about this?

Getting the best unit every time might be too strong, particularly getting free artillery (which are much more expensive than other units). When some unit classes are more expensive than others (cannon and artillery in particular) then you should not be able to get them every time. It would also reward beelines too much, if you are able to guarantee getting whatever high tech unit you've researched up to, even if you are far behind in other spheres.

I think randomness is the easiest way to keep things balanced.

Possibly some way to tie it to the units buildable based on the tech of the citystate, rather than on the tech of the player?