[GS] Canada and Team Play

[MaryKB]

I've suddenly been wondering, how do you think Canada's war declaration restrictions will work in team games?

If you're teamed up with Canada, will you be unable to declare surprise wars, because your teammate won't be able to declare war? And does that mean AI players can't declare surprise wars on you if you're teamed up with Canada?

I know I've frustrated my teammates before because of my Friendship treaties, so usually you can't declare war if you're on a team with someone who can't, so I'm just curious if Canada's really going to affect things.

 

[berlin88]

Given that Canada spent a long time as a colonial possession of Great Britain, there should be a requirement that Canada and Britain cannot declare war on each other, and that when Allied, Canada has to help Britain militarily and economically. If England declares war on someone, then Canada should be required to join the war effort.

 

[Zaarin]

I've never played multiplayer, but if teams mean that if one member can't declare war none can, then I suspect Canada's teammates can neither declare surprise wars nor have surprise wars declared on them...which is really poor foresight on Firaxis' part. (Off topic, but I really like your new avatar.)

Given that Canada spent a long time as a colonial possession of Great Britain, there should be a requirement that Canada and Britain cannot declare war on each other

This is a game about alternate history. That would be even worse than the current "other civs can't declare surprise wars" nonsense. A lot of civs in the game have been historical allies, historically subject to other civs in the game, or historically never gone to war with each other, but the game shouldn't restrict them from doing so.

 

[lordhaw]

Given that Canada spent a long time as a colonial possession of Great Britain, there should be a requirement that Canada and Britain cannot declare war on each other, and that when Allied, Canada has to help Britain militarily and economically. If England declares war on someone, then Canada should be required to join the war effort.

You could say the same thing for Australia as well though.

 

[Yzman]

I've never played multiplayer, but if teams mean that if one member can't declare war none can, then I suspect Canada's teammates can neither declare surprise wars nor have surprise wars declared on them...which is really poor foresight on Firaxis' part. (Off topic, but I really like your new avatar.)


This is a game about alternate history. That would be even worse than the current "other civs can't declare surprise wars" nonsense. A lot of civs in the game have been historical allies, historically subject to other civs in the game, or historically never gone to war with each other, but the game shouldn't restrict them from doing so.

Why would that be an oversight, much less a poor one? A team game makes no sense otherwise. If you don't want that limitation...don't have Canada on your team. Certain people would see that as a huge advantage, not being able to have surprise wars declared on them.

 

[Zaarin]

You could say the same thing for Australia as well though.

And the US, though we did throw off our British overlords rather violently, unlike Canada and Australia. I guess that's why we were uninvited to the Commonwealth...

Why would that be an oversight, much less a poor one? A team game makes no sense otherwise. If you don't want that limitation...don't have Canada on your team. Certain people would see that as a huge advantage, not being able to have surprise wars declared on them.

Personally I think it was a horrible mechanic in the first place. Don't let Canada declare surprise wars? Sure. Make them immune to them, though? Horrible design. A civ shouldn't determine how other civs play the game. Canada should have been barred from surprise wars then given some interesting mechanic to make up for it, like perhaps some kind of penalty to civs that declare surprise wars against them or some kind of defensive bonus when they've had surprise wars declared against them (the same kind of give-and-take we see with the Maori).

 

[Yzman]

And the US, though we did throw off our British overlords rather violently, unlike Canada and Australia. I guess that's why we were uninvited to the Commonwealth...


Personally I think it was a horrible mechanic in the first place. Don't let Canada declare surprise wars? Sure. Make them immune to them, though? Horrible design. A civ shouldn't determine how other civs play the game. Canada should have been barred from surprise wars then given some interesting mechanic to make up for it, like perhaps some kind of penalty to civs that declare surprise wars against them or some kind of defensive bonus when they've had surprise wars declared against them (the same kind of give-and-take we see with the Maori).

Regardless of whether you agree with the mechanic, it would make no sense in a team game where the team shares everything, to not be both beholden to that. No different than an alliance in the game or a peace treaty preventing BOTH team members from declaring war. It also has the effect that neither can have them declared on them.

It is an interesting counter to Persia.

 

[Draco84]

Make Canada unable to declare to surprise wars, but receive 100 (increases with period) diplomatic favour each time a they are subject to a surprise war.

 

[Zaarin]

Regardless of whether you agree with the mechanic, it would make no sense in a team game where the team shares everything, to not be both beholden to that.

I think I mentioned I don't play multiplayer and don't know how multiplayer works, yes? I was speculating. IMO the ability is bad, whether for single player or multiplayer, but I said myself I suspect it does indeed work that way in MP.

 

[berlin88]

And the US, though we did throw off our British overlords rather violently, unlike Canada and Australia. I guess that's why we were uninvited to the Commonwealth...


Personally I think it was a horrible mechanic in the first place. Don't let Canada declare surprise wars? Sure. Make them immune to them, though? Horrible design. A civ shouldn't determine how other civs play the game. Canada should have been barred from surprise wars then given some interesting mechanic to make up for it, like perhaps some kind of penalty to civs that declare surprise wars against them or some kind of defensive bonus when they've had surprise wars declared against them (the same kind of give-and-take we see with the Maori).

By the time of the American Civil War, it would have made little sense for the USA to be part of a British Commonwealth type system, as the population was increasingly of non English / British ancestry. In 1790, roughly 45% of population was of UK ancestry, but after about 1820, the vast majority of immigrants were from non UK countries, such as Germany. By the time of the 1860 census, Germans were the biggest single demographic in America, reaching an estimated peak of 1/3 of the population by the 1940 census.

 

[Zaarin]

By the time of the American Civil War, it would have made little sense for the USA to be part of a British Commonwealth type system, as the population was increasingly of non English / British ancestry. In 1790, roughly 45% of population was of UK ancestry, but after about 1820, the vast majority of immigrants were from non UK countries, such as Germany. By the time of the 1860 census, Germans were the biggest single demographic in America, reaching an estimated peak of 1/3 of the population by the 1940 census.

I think India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Ghana have us beat for non-British citizens--among other African and Asian member states.

 

[Turrdy]

I think we agree, multiplayer and especially multiplayer teams feel a bit neglected by the devs.

 

[679x]

This is a game about alternate history. That would be even worse than the current "other civs can't declare surprise wars" nonsense. A lot of civs in the game have been historical allies, historically subject to other civs in the game, or historically never gone to war with each other, but the game shouldn't restrict them from doing so.

I thought he was joking about Canada having to do England's bidding.

Anyway, I personally don't mind having Canada's teammate suffer the same penalty, because it at least emphasizes the fact that they're a team and should be working together, and play to work around the same negative effects. The part that is going to be annoying is if you're playing multiplayer and your teammate plays a random civ and it ends up being Canada. ESPECIALLY if you picked Persia

 

[Lord Lakely]

I've never played multiplayer, but if teams mean that if one member can't declare war none can, then I suspect Canada's teammates can neither declare surprise wars nor have surprise wars declared on them...which is really poor foresight on Firaxis' part. (Off topic, but I really like your new avatar.)


This is a game about alternate history. That would be even worse than the current "other civs can't declare surprise wars" nonsense. A lot of civs in the game have been historical allies, historically subject to other civs in the game, or historically never gone to war with each other, but the game shouldn't restrict them from doing so.

Built-in relationships aren't necessarily a bad thing. Civ 4 nailed this imo, by assigning each leader to a certain leader pool (As far as I noticed, there are three: "Warrior" (Gilgamesh, Monty, Alex, Napoleon, Louis XIV, DeGaulle, Qin, Catherine, etc), "Reformer" (Asoka, Gandhi, Hammurabi, Sitting Bull, Frederick, Darius, Mansa Musa,) and "Expansionist" (Isabella, Joao, Saladin, Justinian, Charlemagne, Bismarck, etc) who all liked leaders from the same group. Warriors and Reformers also ALWAYS disliked each other on sight, while the Expansionist leaders liked only each other but started neutral towards the others. Unless you played with Random Personalities switched on, of course.

The thing is, all of these relationships were programmed for the AIs. AI-Player relationships are fixed, and each group has always one leader that likes the player (Gandhi, Pacal and Zara Yaqob) and there are several warmongers (Monty & Stalin) which start at Annoyed with +0 relations, regardless of what leader the player is playing as. And between that you have other quirks, like Tokugawa refusing Open Borders unless relations are at least Pleased, Isabella bipolarity whether you follow Buddhism or not, or Suryarvarman II's relations plummeting and rising by double the usual amount when you deny or accept one of his requests.

The Agenda's replace what I wrote in the above paragraph, but the relations between AIs themselves could indeed to be tweaked on a historical basis, so that historical friends have a lower relations threshold for declaring friendships and alliances, or so that historical rivals pretty much denounce each other on sight. That would be nice, though I'm not sure how easy it would be to program that in.

 

[Zaarin]

The Agenda's replace what I wrote in the above paragraph, but the relations between AIs themselves could indeed to be tweaked on a historical basis, so that historical friends have a lower relations threshold for declaring friendships and alliances, or so that historical rivals pretty much denounce each other on sight. That would be nice, though I'm not sure how easy it would be to program that in.

I'd love to see more nuance and personality to the AI, but I wouldn't care to see it taken too historical. How did the Sumerians feel about the Aztec?

 

[The googles do nothing]

All of Canada's abilities seem ill suited for teams games - given the caveat that I haven't seen the new diplomatic functions. However I would not be surprised if someone will find a way of gaming the system of Diplomatic favor using Canada. I would also like to see something done 'evil Australia' with the new grievance system.

 

[MaryKB]

(Off topic, but I really like your new avatar.)

Thank you very kindly!

I totally agree with @Zaarin, I don't think you should ever force things based on history, I mean this is alternate history, right? I also do feel it's weird how you can't declare surprise war on Canada, like he said I think that's unfair how your civilization affects how other nations can play. I think it would've made more sense to have a penalty for declaring surprise war on Canada, like a global loss of diplomatic favor or something, sort of like how with Gandhi you suffer double war weariness, right? So like with India you can still fight them, but you're penalized, but with Canada you just can't even do it, you know?

I was thinking how annoyed my teammates might be, I didn't even think about how Canada could totally mess up Persia!