Bullying City States

[CrazyG]

Hello everybody.

Ever since a major reworking a long time ago, the feature of tributing city-states has been in a weird state. Let's get a consensus on what should be done about it.

First, I wanted to introduce the mechanics, but I cannot find the file containing information for this. If someone can point me in the right direction, I'll tinker myself and try to post suggestions. I do know the following

1. You get more yields from city states with higher populations
2. It's very easy to get low amounts of tribute, which aren't insignificant
   
3. The yields given display as negative, but you won't actually lose yields
   
4. Tributing a CS may give AI quests to war you
5. After you tribute a CS, a countdown begins called "Someone demanded tribute recently". It makes tribute harder (-200 pressure), and declines by 10 pressure a turn. Tributing and heavy tributing while this value is still in play is very possible
   
6. The intention is that if anyone tributes, that countdown starts for everyone. THIS IS NOT THE CASE.
   
7. Tribute is overall really, really good, at least in the early game. See below

Spoiler A Lot of Free Yields :

My total culture to this point in the game is about 258 Getting only about 2/3 of this every turn beats the yields of allying the CS, plus you can get another 25% of that value as culture if you have authority's tribute policy.

As the game goes on, tributing becomes less effective relative to allying the CS (which I view as an intentional feature, not a balance problem).

What I would like to see is

• A higher base requirement, so no more tributing with just a pathfinder. Possibly by making the minimum to tribute 50% scared instead of just 1%.
• Heavy tribute having lower overall values. If you start next to a cultural CS you can reach your 4th policy by turn 50.

 

[Milae]

Yea I was looking at the code yesterday and there's a lot of weirdness going on tbh. I think the only thing you would be able to change from outside the dll is the base gold tribute amount.

Will do a post on GitHub soon and bring up some of your thoughts.

 

[Zanteogo]

I am pretty happy with the current way tribute works.

Heavy does give quite abit, and it does play into the random number gods somewhat (as it depends on which ones spawn next to you) However I don't really see this as a bad thing. The AI uses it all the time so it's not exactly a balance issue?

 

[DaniSciB]

Tributing is a joke. But heavy tributing is powerful... Not only for Authority, also for Tradition and Progress.

With just 3 Spearbois you can get heavy tribute. That is 100+ Culture, Science, almost 200 Production and a brutal amount of Food. This is HUGE early on. At this moment of the game you are probably getting 3-8 Culture per turn and not much more science... The Production is enough to build an Ancient Wonder in 1 turn, the food is priceless specially for Tradition. This just for producing/buying 2 extra troops which you will need to do anyways since wars exist.

As Carthage for example you can do a Tributing Spree with your Quinquerreme, it is powerful enough to get heavy tributes and it can meet almost every city state very early when you get Navigator promos. And since you want a Quinquerreme to explore the seas anyways... It is great.

I honestly think this is a good strategy early on regardless of what you want to do, since early friendships/alliances are hard to make and hold, and the instant yields are just crazy.

A brutal amount of food for my Tradition Capital? Yes please!

A ridiculous amount of Culture as Progress?, God send...

Enough production to "Fake-Great Engineer" a wonder? I sign...

 

[Gazebo]

I've been thinking about tributes for some time, and my longer-term plan is to make it such that the negative penalty for recent tribute is removed, and instead the city state will build a 'pool' of tributeable resources every turn, based on their resource output. This pool would then be drained by x amount when you tribute, based on how much you can ask for (0-100%). This way, the waiting period would be tied to the city-state's output, instead of arbitrary penalty numbers. Does that make sense?

 

[DaniSciB]

I've been thinking about tributes for some time, and my longer-term plan is to make it such that the negative penalty for recent tribute is removed, and instead the city state will build a 'pool' of tributeable resources every turn, based on their resource output. This pool would then be drained by x amount when you tribute, based on how much you can ask for (0-100%). This way, the waiting period would be tied to the city-state's output, instead of arbitrary penalty numbers. Does that make sense?

I like this idea honestly. Would balance things early on, I mean, getting 20-30 turns worth of yields is... Well, you take the idea. (Assuming the pool is tied to the city current production I found hard to believe they will be able to be tributed for 100+ X so early xD)

Now, this maybe will make Authority weaker?. If that happens, maybe a tweak to the Tribute Policy would be required?.

 

[Stalker0]

I've been thinking about tributes for some time, and my longer-term plan is to make it such that the negative penalty for recent tribute is removed, and instead the city state will build a 'pool' of tributeable resources every turn, based on their resource output. This pool would then be drained by x amount when you tribute, based on how much you can ask for (0-100%). This way, the waiting period would be tied to the city-state's output, instead of arbitrary penalty numbers. Does that make sense?

So if I understand the concept, this would have two direct effects:

1) A player who tributes a CS, and then immediately warred and pillaged the CSs land....would have a longer wait period before a good tribute could happen again.

2) Late game, if tributes become rarer, the value of a tribute will keep going up. So in theory late tribute could become very valuable.

 

[Stalker0]

Hello everybody.

Ever since a major reworking a long time ago, the feature of tributing city-states has been in a weird state. Let's get a consensus on what should be done about it.

So I am a little confused. All I have been hearing for months is how crappy Tribute is, and now its OP? Did something change in the last version I missed?


I will say, from the last thread I did on Tributes, it seems the idea of a "minimum threshold" before tributing is activated has a large amount of consensus. So regardless of what else we consider for Tribute, we would start there.

 

[tothePAIN]

I'm confused too - I still think tributing is in a weak place.

 

[Zanteogo]

I'm confused too - I still think tributing is in a weak place.

The gold tribute is usually a joke. The heavy tribute is really good, particularly early.

Again, not a balance issue because the AI loves to take it as well.

 

[CrazyG]

So I am a little confused. All I have been hearing for months is how crappy Tribute is, and now its OP? Did something change in the last version I missed?

I'm confused too - I still think tributing is in a weak place.

I wonder if people who call it bad haven't experimented with the mechanic very much. I don't mean to be rude, but I'd encourage people to try rushing horsemen or spearmen and getting a lot of tribute, because I'm 100% sure I'm right about this. Heavy tributes are very easily worth more than the alliances would be in the early game (and at this stage, you wouldn't have an alliance, and quests are rare).

In the above I earn nearly double what the alliance would give, and I'm only at 80% of potential yields. I take a huge social policy lead as of turn 50 that never gets overcome. Overall, I think that start is actually unlucky in terms of tribute (no science and no faith).

Again, not a balance issue because the AI loves to take it as well.

The AI does tribute sometimes but not that often. They seem to pick an CS to keep tributing all game. The better way to play it is to get a decent sized army quickly and tribute all the CS a few times. Then transition to allying them or whatever you prefer.

 

[Gidoza]

I've been thinking about tributes for some time, and my longer-term plan is to make it such that the negative penalty for recent tribute is removed, and instead the city state will build a 'pool' of tributeable resources every turn, based on their resource output. This pool would then be drained by x amount when you tribute, based on how much you can ask for (0-100%). This way, the waiting period would be tied to the city-state's output, instead of arbitrary penalty numbers. Does that make sense?

I'm not sure I'm fond of this. First off - if it's drained by x amount based on how much you can ask for (0-100%), then even if you can only tribute 50%, you just need to do it for a few turns in a row to get the full 100%, which defeats the purpose of having a 100% around.

 

[ElliotS]

I've been thinking about tributes for some time, and my longer-term plan is to make it such that the negative penalty for recent tribute is removed, and instead the city state will build a 'pool' of tributeable resources every turn, based on their resource output. This pool would then be drained by x amount when you tribute, based on how much you can ask for (0-100%). This way, the waiting period would be tied to the city-state's output, instead of arbitrary penalty numbers. Does that make sense?

No offense, but I think that would cause as many problems as it would solve. If we want to make late-game tributes better we can probably just modify a value, instead of reworking the whole system. Early game it would make it more winner-takes-all which is generally bad for early game balance in my experience.

Can I get your thoughts on what the point of tribute is and when it should be effective? (Early/late) I feel like part of the problem with Tributes is that a lot of people want a lot of different things out of it.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

I am not sure what happens to the CS Tribute scaling,but it EXPLODES in value. I wish I would have focused Culture more in this game and gotten more value out of this. Just got my first tier 3 < 5 turns ago. Also laugh at the 320 Gold.

Spoiler Tyranny Spaceship Program :

 

[CrazyG]

I am not sure what happens to the CS Tribute scaling,but it EXPLODES in value. I wish I would have focused Culture more in this game and gotten more value out of this. Just got my first tier 3 < 5 turns ago. Also laugh at the 320 Gold.

Spoiler Tyranny Spaceship Program :

View attachment 569172 View attachment 569173

Images like this just remind of the compelling counter argument:

tRiBuTiNg CiTy StAtEs Is ToO wEaK

 

[Stalker0]

So looks like Tyranny is still good then

 

[azum4roll]

How did you get that many strategics?

 

[Stalker0]

How did you get that many strategics?

My guess is the Autocracy policy that doubles strategics

 

[ElliotS]

Images like this just remind of the compelling counter argument:

tRiBuTiNg CiTy StAtEs Is ToO wEaK

Yeah having played a game with a lot of water I built 5 triremes and got literally like 1000 culture from them in like 30 turns, taking me from behind the second to last by 1 policy to tied for the lead. (Not archipelago or something, just generated a lot of easy to explore water.)

 

[tothePAIN]

Yeah having played a game with a lot of water I built 5 triremes and got literally like 1000 culture from them in like 30 turns, taking me from behind the second to last by 1 policy to tied for the lead. (Not archipelago or something, just generated a lot of easy to explore water.)

Good. The policy has sucked for awhile. Authority doesn't have a ton of economic levers to use outside of conquering and warfare, which can be tough if the AI gets a lead.