C2C - Civics Discussion Thread

[JosEPh_II]

While you have interesting points about secular and using leader traits more aggressively, the point is that Both these Civics are too strong/enticing for the AI Not to use.

If it was only Gandhi using Pacifism I wouldn't be kicking about it being OP (in fact Gandhi in my current game is Not using Pacifism, go figure!). But when Gilgamesh and Hannibal are using Pacifism and Not engaging in War, as they would normally, this is One Powerful Civic. That 100% Culture boost has to go down.

And Secular with No negatives outweighs Free or State Church when this mod has put so much effort into developing religions. It's another reason ppl keep posting about Civs not founding or using a religion. If they are attracted/sucked in by the Bonuses Secular gives then the other Religion Civics choices become stultified and of no consequence. Secular in it's current State is too OP and destroys the Ideology behind having a set of Religion Civics. Another reason it should be a Society Civic not a Religion Civic.

Cut the Culture bonus For Pacifism in half to start, and eliminate the Culture bonus for Secular for starts. Then the AI may finally start using the other Civics in those categories.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

The main point though is that Pacifism with 100% Culture has warped the AI's gameplay and add in Secular's bonuses one would think that you had enabled the Start up Game Option of "Always Peace". It's time to prune the Civics tree, it's gotten top heavy.

Hopefully not pruned too much. Remember we are the "more as more" type of mod. So tweaking, balancing and re-organizing is surely in order, but civics like Pacifism should always be there under some civic.

However I think some weird civic choices are cool such as Pacifism + Military Tradition comes out to like some Buddhist Monks where they are pacifists but still practice martial arts for defense.

One thing that occurs to me in regard to the ai is that I could very easily tweak the ai civic choices to put much greater weight on the leader traits. That would give more variation and more 'personality'. The downside that makes me slightly hesitant is that it would also leave the ai playing a less optimal game. We could balance this up maybe by actively attaching trait-dependent modifications to each civic (or civic dependent to each trait). For example a militaristic leader adopting pacifism would get a negative modifier that reduced the effectiveness of that civic, and so on. This would apply to the human player too, which also has the benefit (IMO) of making you think a bit more about the traits you choose.

I like this idea. Especially since it can be used to many other civics and different traits.

I agree with Joseph that pacifism is overpowered, but disagree about secular.
Just lower culture boost of two civics and that would be fine.
Also, it is not necessary to move them into society option imo.

Lets say Pacifism was moved. Then we could have Volunteer Army Pacifistics? Or Bandit Pacifistics? I think it needs to stay in this category since it make little sense to combine with the other military civic options. I think if anything Pacifism represent anti-military and needs to be there to counter all the pro-military civics.

 

[JosEPh_II]

However I think some weird civic choices are cool such as Pacifism + Military Tradition comes out to like some Buddhist Monks where they are pacifists but still practice martial arts for defense.

Certain Civs should/could use this IF Pacifism was not in the Military Civic choices. And Military Tradition what Civic group is it in? Or would a new Civic with the Military tradition theme be needed?

You already have some religions that lean in that direction like Shinto.

I like "more is more" it's just that it's also tweakin' time to make all the choices viable for Ai and player alike.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

Certain Civs should/could use this IF Pacifism was not in the Military Civic choices. And Military Tradition what Civic group is it in? Or would a new Civic with the Military tradition theme be needed?

You already have some religions that lean in that direction like Shinto.

I like "more is more" it's just that it's also tweakin' time to make all the choices viable for Ai and player alike.

JosEPh

Military Tradition is an Education Civic. Basically your people are trained in a militaristic style of education. Think the Spartans or Hitler Youth.

 

[ThoricFrame]

There is a down side to secular, not having a state religion. There are things that you can only make while you have a particular state religion and you might not want to lose a big relations bonus with someone powerful if you share the same religion. But sure if you have a ton of religions the benefits far outweigh the penalty, as there are so many extra ones than vanilla there are so many happy faces to be had.

 

[EldrinFal]

I actually always use a state religion and tend towards Free Religion, getting as many as I can in my cities for all the multitude of buildings and units I can make, on top of the bonuses from having multiple religions there.

I actually considered "Military Tradition" as trained/educated by the military, and not as having some kind of defense martial art as part of the culture. I would consider Buddhist Monks as "Religious Tradition" (or educated, I forget the exact wording of that Civic). Spartans yes. North Korea as well.

Victory via Culture isn't easy. I've done it once, but I've never seen an AI pull it off. However, any time a Civic is ALWAYS chosen by ALL the AIs and player, something isn't right. (Other than governments with the set city limits atm.. not much choice there).

I'm actually leery about the ease of flip-flopping civics so easily. A nation spending 100 years at war, then suddenly become Pacifists is dodgy at best

 

[strategyonly]

UPDATED Version 16, 23 Aug 3:00 am



List of changes here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7175010&postcount=2

 

[JosEPh_II]

@SO you have Monotheism listed twice. Did you use what we discussed? Or did you change your mind?

Also did any of the Civics, especially Pacifism get adjusted?

JosEPh

Edit: 2 hours and 10 minutes till D/L finished, If me Sat. dsl holds up!
Edit 2: Thrreee Hoouurs Laateeeeerrrr....72% D/l'd. 2 hours 3 minutes remaining........ Man I really dislike my Sat dsl! But there is nothing better available in the Corn fields.
Edit 3: 5 hours later....at 87% and a whopping D/L speed of 17KB/sec, it still has 119MB to go and another 1 hour and 58 minutes. No version 16 tonight for me.

 

[velosepappe]

I have been thinking about building settlers and conquest lately. I would like to propose two extra civics categories, expansion and war goals. Short explanation: expansion determines how you deal with building more cities, war goals determines how you deal with enemies. I'm afraid that bothwould require quit a lot of high level coding but here it goes anyway.

Expansion (dealing mostly with what settler units you can build)

-One tribe: no settlers, 'your civ lacks the concept of holding togetter a group that is not at the same location'

-Split population (at tribalism): tribe settler unit, building a tribe costs you 1 population point and/or destroys some buildings, 'as the tribe grows too big to support at one location the tribe has to split. The people that leave take with them their posessions'

-Colonialism (somewhere in late ancient, early classical, think roman style colonies): colonist unit with large support cost, this unit can defend itself and upun founding it creates a defensive unit, high capital distance cost modifier, 'new colonies have very often taken a long time to be profitable, as did setting up a colonization attempt'

-Manifest destiny (with a renaissance political or philosophical tech): I forgot the name for those small bands of colonists, they should be easy to build, maybe even spawn automatically. Distance cost modifiers are rather small as these new settlements are supposed to be self-relieant, however there is a huge diplomatic penalty with your nearest neighbours as they see this agressive expansion policy as a way to seize land that they find is rightfully theirs.

-Forced mass expansion (some authoritarian type technology in the industrial age): I dont know how to call this settler unit but building it should be something like conscription, reducing the city size, adding a lot of unhappyness and instability, but city founding should give a city with a rather large population, maybe some workers to quickly develop the surrounding area. I think this civic should also provide a huge nationwide instability malus.

-Planned Cities (a civil engineering atleast an early modern tech): Engineers, new cities start with 1 population point but a lot of infrastructure allready present, the engineer should be very costly to build, maybe take a few turns to settle, and if possible should be supplied by/merged with merchant type units during settlement creation.

I will proceed with war goals in my next post

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have been thinking about building settlers and conquest lately. I would like to propose two extra civics categories, expansion and war goals. Short explanation: expansion determines how you deal with building more cities, war goals determines how you deal with enemies. I'm afraid that bothwould require quit a lot of high level coding but here it goes anyway.

Expansion (dealing mostly with what settler units you can build)

-One tribe: no settlers, 'your civ lacks the concept of holding togetter a group that is not at the same location'

-Split population (at tribalism): tribe settler unit, building a tribe costs you 1 population point and/or destroys some buildings, 'as the tribe grows too big to support at one location the tribe has to split. The people that leave take with them their posessions'

-Colonialism (somewhere in late ancient, early classical, think roman style colonies): colonist unit with large support cost, this unit can defend itself and upun founding it creates a defensive unit, high capital distance cost modifier, 'new colonies have very often taken a long time to be profitable, as did setting up a colonization attempt'

-Manifest destiny (with a renaissance political or philosophical tech): I forgot the name for those small bands of colonists, they should be easy to build, maybe even spawn automatically. Distance cost modifiers are rather small as these new settlements are supposed to be self-relieant, however there is a huge diplomatic penalty with your nearest neighbours as they see this agressive expansion policy as a way to seize land that they find is rightfully theirs.

-Forced mass expansion (some authoritarian type technology in the industrial age): I dont know how to call this settler unit but building it should be something like conscription, reducing the city size, adding a lot of unhappyness and instability, but city founding should give a city with a rather large population, maybe some workers to quickly develop the surrounding area. I think this civic should also provide a huge nationwide instability malus.

-Planned Cities (a civil engineering atleast an early modern tech): Engineers, new cities start with 1 population point but a lot of infrastructure allready present, the engineer should be very costly to build, maybe take a few turns to settle, and if possible should be supplied by/merged with merchant type units during settlement creation.

I will proceed with war goals in my next post

This is doable. It can be mostly achieved in XML and Python however there would need to be AI written for the the non-humans.

If we have the building of a unit costs a population point then the unit should not be built with food. We would need to make a min population requirement of two also.

We already have different settler units providing free buildings when they build a city. This was inherited from RoM and is still not in the pedia.

(The Great Bath wonder automatically increases the initial size of a city by one.)

 

[velosepappe]

War goals (which deals with how your civ acquires more territory trough war and mostly what possibilities you have when you conquer a city). Early on, in prehistoric era your civ isnt advanced enough to grasp the idea of integrating non-native people into your own civ so no city conquest in the early game:

-force enemy from land, basic civic: upon conquest the city is razed, the enemy gets a refugee settler unit with defence value and must try to escape to settle elsewhere

-raiding, with a banditry related tech: upon conquest you dont acquire the city (dont know if this is possible) but you loot some gold and tech. The raided city loses some buildings and a population point, maybe with slavery civic 1 or 2 slaves are created

-conquer and expell, with warfare: upon conquest the city drops down to pop 1 but some buildings are retained, some foreign refugees are created, low city anarchy time

-subjugation, with slavery: upon conquest the majority of foreign pop are turned into slave units that can be used elsewhere, the city is kept

-impose own culture (sorry found no good name), ancient military tech: long anarchy length, more unrest and/or unhappiness in conquered territory, should be pretty costly

-integrate, classical cultural tech: 'your own people try to learn and retain the best parts of the conquered people', shorter anarchy period, less unrest and/or unhappiness in conquered territory, more unhappiness in domestic territory

-the 'your civ adjective' way (like the roman way), late classical cultural: depending on some factors like culture, wonders and tech some neighbouring city populations might long to be part of your empire. The only thing you need to do is remove the neighboring civs military units, no anarchy (this looks a lot like converting a city by cultural means which is almost removed)

-i have no idea what to do with later conquest civics, I feel that at least one of the should give conquered cities to a puppet state/vasal, lets call it goverment change. Maybe also a colonialism inspired conquest type used to get easy access to a distant empires resources.

Now that I think about it most of this could possibly be a choice you are able to make when you destroy the last city defender, and could be totally dependent on other civics and current technology Banditry civic enables the choice of raiding, more advanced military civics disable the choice of looting, slavery civic enables enslaving and subjugation, the warfare tech enables the choice to keep a city and so on. I think this would make the whole process of conquest more interesting as now your only choice is to keep it or to destroy it.

 

[velosepappe]

This is doable. It can be mostly achieved in XML and Python however there would need to be AI written for the the non-humans.

If we have the building of a unit costs a population point then the unit should not be built with food. We would need to make a min population requirement of two also.

We already have different settler units providing free buildings when they build a city. This was inherited from RoM and is still not in the pedia.

(The Great Bath wonder automatically increases the initial size of a city by one.)

Yes I know this, I think changing the expansion process might make this part of the game more interesting and less of a no-brainer, but I agree that the hardest part would be the AI. I havent tried modding before, but I do have some programming experience so soon maybe I will try to mod myself. I geuss the hardest part is just getting yourself to start modding. Anyway, I am also just curious if these ideas are good for a start. I tend to have a verygood imagination but bad apraisal skills.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Expansion Civic
I am not sure if this even needs to be done via civic. Seems like this could be done though techs and units and still achieve a similar result.

@War Goals Civic
Again this seems more like it could be done better though technological unlocking of abilities. Mainly because as you go they seem to progress to better things.

Overall I wonder if some could just be added to existing civics such as the Military Civics or Power Civics or Government Civics.

For instance why would anyone want to pick the ciic with forced razing unless they had to. Seems like that could be done through a tech that allows you to keep the cities you take over. Or if you did link it to a civic then link it to Ancarhism or something. Likewise "Raiding" civic seems like it would fit well under Banditry Civic.

In short it may be better to give existing civics new abilities or even adding new civics to existing civic categories.

 

[Koshling]

I havent tried modding before, but I do have some programming experience so soon maybe I will try to mod myself. I geuss the hardest part is just getting yourself to start modding.

If you have the time I can help you get set up. Some help on the programmin side would be appreciated since the list of things to do is always way longer than the amount of time to do them (espeically AI related).

 

[EldrinFal]

I don't think I'm particularly fond of these ideas. War Goals force a decision on city-taking ahead of time-- a choice that is typically based on the particular city the player or AI is attacking. During a war, I raze some cities, and others I occupy. And those that were captured from a 3rd civ I *might* return to them if the city is far from my borders or otherwise unimportant. Having a Civic lock the player into a choice ahead of time just seems too artificial and restrictive.

Also, the last civic idea you had is already implemented with the fact that cities can convert to your empire if the cultural influence is high enough (if you have the setting on). And then there is the REV mod.


As for the Expansion Civic...

1) The no settler idea is already in place. In C2C you can't make them until Tribalism.

2) Removing a population was something done in earlier versions of Civilization. Though I haven't played vanilla Civ 4 in such a long time it may have originally been there too!! Don't recall. But I'm glad it isn't now. I think if you DRAFTED a Settler unit then it could make sense, but if you're spending the time/production/food/years/turns to make a Settler unit, then I think that accounts for "making" those extra people. You could conceivably argue that any unit draws population if using that method. I also wouldn't think that people leaving a village are going to tear down buildings to bring those materials with them.

3) Auto-spawning settlers is an interesting idea, but I don't think a whole civic is needed for it. Better to be a Wonder of some kind like the King Arthur one that spawns those knights. Or Team Project "Manifest Destiny" something like that.

Founding new towns near other civs already raises an eyebrow with that civ.

4) Settlers in the later game in C2C already build with a higher population and some buildings. Wonders can make that number higher as DH mentioned. I like this feature quite a bit.

 

[velosepappe]

I don't think I'm particularly fond of these ideas. War Goals force a decision on city-taking ahead of time-- a choice that is typically based on the particular city the player or AI is attacking. During a war, I raze some cities, and others I occupy. And those that were captured from a 3rd civ I *might* return to them if the city is far from my borders or otherwise unimportant. Having a Civic lock the player into a choice ahead of time just seems too artificial and restrictive.

Also, the last civic idea you had is already implemented with the fact that cities can convert to your empire if the cultural influence is high enough (if you have the setting on). And then there is the REV mod.

Culture flipping is pretty rare as I remember. And I dont know how realistic it is to enter a city with military and expect that the populacy would just welcome you. But i'd like some mechanism in which groups of people want to be a part of your culture like in roman times. I've also contemplated the spawning of villages in neutral territories along important trade routes and fertile lands (or spots that have many resources in their immediate surroundings). These could be lightly defended and after a certain time grow into neutral cities or convert to the nation which is nearest and contributes the most to the trade route they sit on. However I dont think right now trade routes are physical entities.

2) Removing a population was something done in earlier versions of Civilization. Though I haven't played vanilla Civ 4 in such a long time it may have originally been there too!! Don't recall. But I'm glad it isn't now. I think if you DRAFTED a Settler unit then it could make sense, but if you're spending the time/production/food/years/turns to make a Settler unit, then I think that accounts for "making" those extra people. You could conceivably argue that any unit draws population if using that method. I also wouldn't think that people leaving a village are going to tear down buildings to bring those materials with them.

It could make sense if it happens in a nomadic society, where people are supposed to bring their trade materials with them. An idea could be that certain buildings are demolished when making the settler and automatically built when settling the new city. How we could implement this, with some modding, is making the settler unit only rushable (for a fixed population amount) or only conscriptable, when certain building requirements are met. When rushed these buildings are removed and when the settler builds the city, it starts with the buildings prebuilt. A certain city population could be required for building the settler unit.

3) Auto-spawning settlers is an interesting idea, but I don't think a whole civic is needed for it. Better to be a Wonder of some kind like the King Arthur one that spawns those knights. Or Team Project "Manifest Destiny" something like that.

Founding new towns near other civs already raises an eyebrow with that civ.

Yes, a nice idea. Maybe we could make this a national wonder for certain civics. The tradeoffs can be discussed later.

4) Settlers in the later game in C2C already build with a higher population and some buildings. Wonders can make that number higher as DH mentioned. I like this feature quite a bit.

I havent gone far enough in the game. You are talking about wonders that give each city certain buildings I guess.

 

[EldrinFal]

Culture flipping is pretty rare as I remember. And I dont know how realistic it is to enter a city with military and expect that the populacy would just welcome you. But i'd like some mechanism in which groups of people want to be a part of your culture like in roman times. I've also contemplated the spawning of villages in neutral territories along important trade routes and fertile lands (or spots that have many resources in their immediate surroundings). These could be lightly defended and after a certain time grow into neutral cities or convert to the nation which is nearest and contributes the most to the trade route they sit on. However I dont think right now trade routes are physical entities.

They don't. Which is why there are several turns of anarchy in that city, which is quite a few years depending on the era you're in. If you use the REV mod, I believe dominant cultures play a larger role and can trigger cities wanting to join your empire.

Spawning villages that belong to your empire already? Or are neutral? There has been recent changes to C2C to help reduce the city spawn tactic, so I'm not sure how that would mesh.

Try out the REV mod if you aren't using it. That might provide some of the things you're interested in already.

It could make sense if it happens in a nomadic society, where people are supposed to bring their trade materials with them. An idea could be that certain buildings are demolished when making the settler and automatically built when settling the new city. How we could implement this, with some modding, is making the settler unit only rushable (for a fixed population amount) or only conscriptable, when certain building requirements are met. When rushed these buildings are removed and when the settler builds the city, it starts with the buildings prebuilt. A certain city population could be required for building the settler unit.

But then a nomadic people wouldn't leave anything behind would they? Buildings, people, etc. They would also probably not build certain buildings. I think you can create a unit that does that if you made special "buildings" for that purpose; where you create the requisite buildings and then your "final" settler unit requires those to be built, but when you build the settler, it destroys those certain buildings.

According to the tech tree though I think Sedentary Lifestyle would essentially make that obsolete (by definition) and that's a fairly early tech.

I havent gone far enough in the game. You are talking about wonders that give each city certain buildings I guess.

Don't worry. A lot of people haven't gotten to the end game. C2C takes a long time to play and with all the changes and new versions, we're all just restarting again and again before getting to the later game.

 

[BlueGenie]

I havent gone far enough in the game. You are talking about wonders that give each city certain buildings I guess.

I think he is referring to The Great Bath of Mohjen-Daro: New cities are settled with +1 Pop.

The Colonist settles with 3 pop base and some buildings already built.

But you are right about other wonders that give free buildings in every city. Both National and World ones. Those you'd get anyway regardless of pop start in a city.

Cheers

 

[velosepappe]

Spawning villages that belong to your empire already? Or are neutral? There has been recent changes to C2C to help reduce the city spawn tactic, so I'm not sure how that would mesh.

Try out the REV mod if you aren't using it. That might provide some of the things you're interested in already.

It could be a more natural way to acquire new territories, would make foreign trade and internal trade more important (people have settled on important trade routes all the time, like the silk route). The early game would be more about trying to enlarge your influence and trying to peacefully or militaristically control checkpoints. For example the neutral villages could spawn on a resource, connecting them to your capital and getting them to switch to your culture would give you access to it. It would take a long time for them to turn into a real city, if you havent put your own city next to them. I would envision things like this: colonizing with a self-built city is very costly but pretty quick, turn a neutral vilage into a city is very slow but a lot less costly as it grows naturally.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Just as RoM had Modmods made for it, C2C could have some too. That way if you liked the Modmods premise you could install it and use it. If you didn't you simply don't include the Modmod.

I think the whole City Limits and Fixed Borders implementations would've been better if handled this way. And I really don't know why I didn't mention this earlier. Could've maybe saved some arguements and tons of posts.


JosEPh