C2C Cultural Revolt

[Thunderbrd]

Let's take a moment to clear up some confusion many of us have had regarding cultural revolts (and why we rarely see them take place in C2C.)

I'm currently adjusting the way units interact with this chance. Let me first explain the mechanism we've been working with:

1. Every round the city checks to see if there is a chance of revolt. This initial check has a 10% chance of coming up as true.
   
   
2. That check itself has been reduced by the unit with the best Revolt Protection (iRevoltProtection did not come from units themselves but from their promos and unitcombats and up to now only promos.) Many promotions were set to have high enough values on this to totally negate this initial check entirely if the unit with that promotion is present in the city. All it took was a value of 10 or more to completely negate this check. Some promos had revolt protections as high as 100.
   
   
3. If the initial check is passed, the city then checks to see if it actually does revolt. There's really no chance of it unless another civilization has more culture in the city than the 'owner' of the city. Thus, each % point above 50% = a % pt chance of the city successfully revolting. As a base anyhow.
   
   
4. Modifiers to this chance include the city having the nation's state religion and a compiled total of the local units with iCultureGarrison to equal a direct opposition to the check. Therefore, looking at units alone, the amount of units in the city would total their iCultureGarrison values and that total would directly reduce the % chance of revolt on this second check. iCultureGarrison is a value that has only been assigned directly to base unitinfos and has not been adjustable by promotions or unitcombats. Many of these have been quite high as well. Since they, in effect directly contradict the city strength (%culture above the owner) it's quite easy for units to counter the final chance of revolt.
   
   
5. If the check is passed, the city revolts.

Goes a long ways towards explaining why it's very very rare for cities to ever culturally revolt.

I'm making some adjustments here and I can foresee some additional ones to come:

• Removing the iRevoltProtection counteraction force on the first check. 10% will be a solid constant for this first check at this point.
  
  
• iRevoltProtection now amounts to an iCultureGarrisonChange tag. I've not renamed it because it is already in use in numerous places. However, it is cumulative with Culture Garrison.
  
  
• Total Revolt Protection becomes a % reduction to the ultimate chance to revolt. Yes, this can still exceed 100% and thus make the chance to revolt impossible.
  
  
• Removed all base iCultureGarrison values from units and added modifiers of a range of 0-4 to iRevoltProtection tags on unitcombats.
  
  
• Adjusted the AI evaluation on iRevoltProtection to match the new value measurements.
  
  
• Adjusted the actual iRevoltProtection values on promotions to measure up a little better to the new system.
  
  
• Updated game display texts to be a little more transparent with what's taking place with the chances of revolt and why and on units to show how they interact with them.

In layman's terms, what this means is that with this restructuring units have, basically, a singular Revolt Protection value and that value accumulates for each unit in the city. The overall value of this protection is the % the Revolt likelihood is reduced by. However, a city can only have a chance of revolt to begin with if another civ has greater culture in the city than your civ does and the greater the other civ has that upper hand culturally, the more chance it has to revolt - a chance reduced by the local Revolt Protection value.


And still to do:

• Add some small increasing base value to Law Enforcement and Entertainer units themselves. There's enough on military as it is.
  
  
• Add an increasing penalty value to Criminal units (one way to inspire a nation to lose a city to revolt will be to swarm them with criminals that are good at fomenting revolt. They'll also need to get an upper hand with culture to give it a chance of happening to begin with.)

And a bit farther off, once this system shows it's balances and results I can start giving buildings some tags to influence things themselves.

There was also some hint in the dll that there may be some interaction with iRevoltProtection values in Rev. Since that's all handled in python I'm a little blind to what that interaction may be, however, the only hint of it was in how Afforess had adjusted the promotion AI to completely ignore the cultural revolt mechanism and instead play off of a Revolutions only index value. If anyone can help to clear up how Revolt Protection may be interacting with Rev, we might be able to make sure the new numbers are still appropriate there. For all I know, this may still improve Rev naturally even if there is an interaction I'm unaware of there.

Anyhow, I'm bringing this up for further discussion and feedback from gameplay. These changes will be on the SVN shortly.

Note: I admit to some oversimplification of the chance or revolt calculation for ease of discussion. It's based more on a ratio of their culture to yours and can actually exceed 100%. But I'll let y'all see in-game how it actually plays out now that it's more transparent. If there's a chance of revolt, it will show in the city bar info hover and in the city screen it will show on the hoverover info on the culture bar. This chance is only called on if the initial 10% chance of a revolt event is successful.


EDIT: I've also made a discovery that shows that as some have suspected, the minimum city borders option does indeed make the chance or revolt impossible as the city is always considered more owned by the owner than by any other civ that has some cultural presence there. We should call this option 'No Cultural Revolts'. lol. Kinda sad.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Buildings have a tag iRevolutionIndexModifier which is supposed to adjust the chance of revolution. The doco says that this adjustment is for the city only but people have said that it is nation wide and every existing building is counted.

The Cultural revolt you mention above is not the same as the Revolution revolt although it may affect it. If you have Revolution on then both are active as far as I can see. Things that affect the chance of revolution in your city if Revolution is on are

• civics
• tax rate
• amount in the "bank" ie gold you currently have
• religion

There are others but I can't remember them at the moment.

The Story Teller/Entertainer line of units and Great Artists have always had a "cultural bomb" style mission which directly affects the percentage of your culture in a city. A new mission was added to the Story Teller/Entertainer line of units that both removed some turns of anarchy from a recently conquered city and increased your percentage culture in that city.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Buildings have a tag iRevolutionIndexModifier which is supposed to adjust the chance of revolution. The doco says that this adjustment is for the city only but people have said that it is nation wide and every existing building is counted.

Due to a bug in the dll that I could fix but I'm not sure how it all plays into the big picture so I haven't.

 

[strategyonly]

Here is what the Modiki says:

iCultureGarrison: The suppression value of a unit while garrisoned in a rebelling city.

iRevoltProtection: Percentage decrease in base city revolt chance. (All current promotions have a value of 0).

 

[Toffer90]

I've wondered how iCultureGarrison and iRevoltProtection played a part in the cultural rev. mechanism. Your explanation of it make it all so clear why I only manage to initiate such a revolution when I push my culture very close to 100% in foreign cities and why it may not even happen then.

This is definitively a step in the right direction.

Did a negative iCultureGarrison have an effect before this change? Does it have an effect now?
I though the iCultureGarrison had an effect on capturing forts, could you enlighten me a bit on this mechanic?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I've wondered how iCultureGarrison and iRevoltProtection played a part in the cultural rev. mechanism. Your explanation of it make it all so clear why I only manage to initiate such a revolution when I push my culture very close to 100% in foreign cities and why it may not even happen then.

This is definitively a step in the right direction.

Exactly. I know Joe and others have stated some frustration with the loss of the potential for this type of event and I've long been a bit irritated with it myself. I'm not making it impossible for players to ensure avoiding such local revolts here but I AM making it take a bit more effort to do so and making it much easier for such a revolt to take place. A strategic artist blast may have a solid impact once again, which will also make DH's Entertainers much more useful for their minor ability to enact culture bombs.

This also gives more specialized uses for Law Enforcement, Entertainers and Criminals... even Administrators (Judges and Lawyer units) play a role when hanging out in the city.

(@DH: Maybe I should give your new Lawyer Specialists a tag to improve Revolt Resistance by mitigating disputes more effectively? What do you think?)

Did a negative iCultureGarrison have an effect before this change? Does it have an effect now?

It would've, yes, but it never did previously.

It does now, and keep in mind that iRevoltResistance is the unitcombat and promotion modifier to iCultureGarrison on the unit. I've given Criminals a -3 base iRevoltResistance and it will grow as they upgrade. Crime promos will increase this (potentially beneficial) penalty as well. Ruffian units also have a -2 base but it can only ever be a penalty to the owning player really since they won't be able to enter a non-owner owned city without capturing it for the barbarian team. I suppose they could compile into a player driven revolt in a barb city... not entirely sure if that's possible or not but I don't see any reason it wouldn't be.

I though the iCultureGarrison had an effect on capturing forts, could you enlighten me a bit on this mechanic?

I didn't see any role it would play in that unless its possible for forts to revolt with the same mechanism as a city would. Making that as visible would be very difficult. Forts, under superforts as we have it, forts earn culture but they do so as a result of being inhabited by units that can defend and at a rate determined by the fort info itself. Fairly simple.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Here is what the Modiki says:

iCultureGarrison: The suppression value of a unit while garrisoned in a rebelling city.

iRevoltProtection: Percentage decrease in base city revolt chance. (All current promotions have a value of 0).

That follows what I was explaining. Suppression value is a rather vague term which I broke down the numeric meaning of a bit more in the first post here. There really was no good reason to have a modifier applying to the first check and a second modifier applying to the second. It was leading to a large degree of counter-intuitive value assignments that were destroying all potential for cultural revolution taking place in our mod. What I've done is give us a bit more flexibility here.

From here on out , those tags, iCultureGarrison and iRevoltProtection are pretty much synonymous as iRevoltProtection adds to the total iCultureGarrison to come up with the final Culture Revolt Resistance value. This will also be something you can see on units - previously iCultureGarrison on units didn't have any display in the help hovers or pedia so it was entirely invisible to the player what impact they were having, which is entirely unhelpful to a modder trying to understand the value of a given integer setting for iCultureGarrison.