City State Diplomacy Mod (Updated)

[thanerion]

Oh and you could add "Whoward" to the list of names for great diplomats, just for recognition ;-)

Few other project ideas:
- Naval Domination - gold: all naval units receive morale promotion (normally only availible for ships built in a city with heroic epic) and +15 xp, silver: X best naval units with some exp appear (ctrl+c code for freedom tenent that gives units?), bronze: free exploration or honor policy (if not possible - free policy),
- Build United Nations HQ - gold: united nations HQ is in your capital (+1 vote), silver: auxiliary organisation HQ in capital (+1 vote; so gold receives 2 votes total), bronze: few diplomatic units,
- Tallest Building in the World Competition - gold: bonus tourism, silver: bonus culture, bronze: hammer bonus in all cities for 45 turns.

Edit:
To put all the ideas in one place:
- Tackle World Hunger / Spread Medicine: gold: tourism bonus (thank you oh great Atilla for feeding the poor), silver: % growth bonus in cities other than the capital, bronze: +1 food per city except for the capital,
- World Post Project: gold: extended trade route range, silver: culture bonus, bronze: +X gold from trade routes,
- Pre-Industrial Revolution Project (land to the peasants etc.): gold: happiness bonus, silver: growth bonus, bronze: culture bonus or farms give +1 food/gold or something along these lines. Note: for this to make sense, farms in all countries after this project has passed should have their food yield reduced by at least 1 apple.
- Industrial Revolution Project (8 hours of work, 8 hours to ourselves, 8 hours of sleep, blah blah blah ;p): gold: happiness bonus, silver: science bonus for X turns, bronze: factories give +2 to production. Note: for this to make sense, factories in all countries after this project has passed should have their production yield reduced by at least 2 hammers. It can also cause unhappiness, especially in countries following freedom and autocracy ideologies.

Additional ones that came to mind after the edit:
- Freedom of Press Project: gold: tourism bonus, silver: culture bonus and an additional promotion to diplomats (maybe something along the lines of "white spies" - whenever this diplomatic unit is popped, the owner receives a few beakers from analysing stuff in the press), bronze: +x permanent paper. It would be awesome if passing this project also increased unhappiness, especially in countries following order or authocracy (free press is a double-edged sword),
- Benevolent Leader Charity Project: gold: tourism bonus, silver: relation bonus with countries that are already friendly, bronze: a small growth bonus for a limited number of turns. It would be awesome if passing this project also increased unhappiness, especially in countries following order or freedom ideologies.

 

[whoward69]

but it's driving me nuts sometimes (behold, an army of 30+ workboats that the dutch created god-only-knows-why).

Are you using an old version of the combined CSD + CivIV Features + Various Mod Comps DLL? As this was a bug I introduced (and removed) some versions back.

 

[thanerion]

Are you using an old version of the combined CSD + CivIV Features + Various Mod Comps DLL? As this was a bug I introduced (and removed) some versions back.

Only CSD - this happened once in v18 I think and I've seen it yesterday with the current version (along with a korean naval invasion fleet consisting of 20 or so turtle ships against a civ with 1 coastal city with a single accessible tile of coast and mass-suicide of french triplanes vs a fleet of my destroyers/battleships). The "best of" award goes however to Assyria who tried to attack my city defended by 6 compo bowmen with an "army" of 15 or so lone siege towers that never attacked anything and were just moving back and forth. Not that this was naval, but still ;-)

 

[Darkwave09]

How do I increase the gold cost of purchasing diplo units? IMO buying Diplo units is like gifting cash to city states like in Vanilla. I would like to increase the gold cost by a factor of 10. I have been trying to figure it out but can't seem to get anywhere. The one file I've been tinkering with is the "unit gold cost" but can't seem to get anywhere. I am fairly inexperienced with Mods so any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ekmek]

I thought it was related to how much production is needed

 

[whoward69]

How do I increase the gold cost of purchasing diplo units?

Gold cost is a function of production cost multiplied by (100 + HurryCostModifier)/100, so if you want to increase the purchase cost, but not the production cost, increase HurryCostModifier

 

[Gazebo]

How do I increase the gold cost of purchasing diplo units? IMO buying Diplo units is like gifting cash to city states like in Vanilla. I would like to increase the gold cost by a factor of 10. I have been trying to figure it out but can't seem to get anywhere. The one file I've been tinkering with is the "unit gold cost" but can't seem to get anywhere. I am fairly inexperienced with Mods so any help would be greatly appreciated.

There's an option for this in my Options.sql file. Scroll down in that file until you find the option related to 'gold purchasing diplomatic units.' Change the integer value to your desired level (following the instructions on page 1). Should do the trick! You can also disable gold-purchasing of diplo units entirely – I usually do, if only to resist the temptation.

________

Thanks for the ideas, Thanerion and whoward. Lots to think about. I'm going to do a better job of focusing my efforts - I jumped around a lot last time (as whoward can tell you), and got a bit overwhelmed with changes. Once I have some free time, I'm going to start looking into the following changes.

1.) WC resolutions. I want to add a new renaissance-era project and a non-science atomic/post-modern era project. I also want to add the SS production malus. Those are my first three priorities.

2.) I'd like to address voting oddities (such as the one whoward mentioned), as well as more refined tweaks to host/leader/diplo victory decisions.

3.) Now, the biggie. I don't love the diplo victory being an 'everybody vote for me' ending. It just feels...dull. Especially when it becomes a 2+ vote grind every 20 turns circa 2000ad. So...how do we fix this?

The two elements of the game that I think need to mesh more closely with the Diplomatic Victory are ideology and religion. They are elements of the game which affect most other elements, but don't really have their own niche. I think diplomacy can be that niche.

First, we need to think about what the 'Diplomacy Victory' is supposed to represent. In vanilla BNW, it is about gold. The problem with this method is that a player can effectively save their money, never do a lick of diplomacy, then dump it all at once one turn before the UN vote and control all the city-states. Dull.

In CSD, the Diplo Victory is all about reach. Getting out, exploring, moving units across the map, controlling city-states through quests and missions, manipulating the WC by denying city-states to other players, etc. All good things. A big part of 'reach' (in terms of gameplay mechanics), however, is done somewhat passively – ideology spread, influence spread, religious spread, trade routes, etc. This is by design, but I feel that the diplo player should have more gain, and more to lose, by not focusing their attention on accelerating these elements.

Here's what I want to see: I'd like for the Diplomatic Victory to be achievable without needing a single vote from another major civilization.

Why? Because none of the other victory conditions require that level of cooperation with the finicky AI and, ultimately, 'Diplomatic' victory isn't necessarily about peace or cooperation. It is about being the dominant political powerhouse. It is more of a 'strong-arm victory' than a 'let's all be friends' victory. It is the process of becoming a soft-power superpower. The AI shouldn't want you to win this, but they should be powerless to prevent it if you control most city-states, have the dominant ideology and/or the dominant religion. In short, the diplo victory should be about beating the AI by building an empire, not standing on their shoulders to reach that last vote.

So, what to do? Two changes– one big, one small.

1.) Ideology tweaks:

Ideology-bound, late-game national wonder that, in addition to other bonuses, grants additional world congress votes based on a unique factor. For Freedom, it could be tied to the number of trade routes. For Order, the number of factories. For Autocracy, the number of puppet cities. I'd like for a 'wide' playstyle to mesh well with a diplomatic victory, and this might be a good way to do it.

In addition, the World Ideology vote should grant votes based on the number of players following the ideology, not just a flat amount. This goes back to that concept of tapping into 'reach.' It would be a 'stepping-stone' towards winning a diplo victory (much like the Apollo Program for Science), and would benefit all players of that ideology, not just you (so you would have to make sure that you have the most to gain from such a resolution).

Lastly, ideologies should hit harder, and sooner, when your people (or their people) are discontent. Playing on difficulties above King rarely results in defecting cities because the AI's happiness boost keeps them above that. This should change. City-flipping is fun, and encourages more conversions (and more votes for the dominant player).

2.) Religion tweaks:

The World Religion vote should, like Ideology, grant more votes than it currently does. Perhaps convert faith per turn into votes, at a factor of 100/1? Number of faith-producing Wonders? 1 Vote per 3 cities following your faith? Simple change, but important, in my opinion. Also, a World Wonder that grants additional WC votes would be a much-needed boost for a Holy City's importance late-game.

So, to sum up, vote sources would be:

- Base value (reduced, to compensate for votes added above)
- City-State alliances (same # of votes as before, though perhaps increased by an ideology N. wonder)
- Religion (increased from WC vote, W. Wonder)
- Ideology (increased from WC vote, N. Wonder)
- Existing bonuses (Diplomats @ Globalization, Forbidden Palace)

Together, these changes are not all that hard to implement (balance is another issue), but they would allow a player to, as noted above, win a diplomatic victory without having to rely on other world leaders. The player could, in short, claim 'global dominance' without conquering anyone, and such a victory would be based on a player's long-term commitment to spreading their CS influence, religion, trade and ideology throughout the game, not a last-minute back-room deal with Ramkhamhaeng where I trade him all my horses and a crate of cotton for his game-deciding vote.

Side note: I'm half-tempted to change the 'Elect World Leader' text to 'Acknowledge Global Dominance' or something a bit more ominous, just for fun.

Thoughts on this?

Yes, I know, lots of words, but this is an idea that has been in gestation for some time.
G

 

[ExpiredReign]

Two points.
First. I really like the idea of the points being used for something else. We have been looking for ways of providing other options to expend that yield for a while, and I believe your concept of conversion to votes is brilliant.

Second. Whilst I like the idea of a 'passive' domination victory, I tend to prefer that playstyle myself, I think in the hands of the AI it may be problematic for the player.
There will need to be in place a system of brakes that can be used to stop the runaway diplomatic juggernauts. You said this about the AI:

The AI shouldn't want you to win this, but they should be powerless to prevent it if you control most city-states, have the dominant ideology and/or the dominant religion.

The reverse is also true. I won't want this if I am powerless to prevent it from happening.

Having said that though, I am looking forward to seeing it take place.

If I can assist in any means at all with this, I would be honoured. Time is always on my side.

 

[thanerion]

I will expand my reply soon, since there is a lot to take into consideration - you have figured out the positive parts, so I'll focus on the risks. So this is not "negative feedback", but the good sides are clear, so pointing out the bad sides seems the obvious way to go with commenting your (great) ideas ;-)

1. Religion, just as science, sucks big time. Let's be honest - it's not the most unengaging, passive part of gameplay only because we have science. What is worse, not everyone has it. On King you have religion more or less granted - on Emperor+, you only get a shot at it, which is entirely luck-based (population pop from goody hut that boosts science, pottery pop from goody hut, and finally - faith pop from goody hut). During our hotseat games, players sometimes don't have religion - simply because AI is much closer to getting it (starting with Pottery, production bonuses that also apply to shrines, all that good stuff). Religion being passive as it is makes it not-necessary. If you make it necessary, or a big part in diplomatic gameplay, some games will end before then even begin, because on Emperor+, most religions are already found by the time you get to Theology. That makes Ethiopia or Maya extremely powerful (since their +2 faith shrines were balanced for faith that is a nice addition, but far from mandatory), along with the Desert-bias civs, who already have it good thanks to the allmighty combo of Desert Folklore + Petra in a capital.
Edit: this has much to do with how the spreading system works - all you really need are paths, trade routes and a Grand Temple. You might want to jump-start spread with a few missionaries (like the ones you get from finishing Borobudur), but that's about it - the plague will spread on it's own and there is nothing you need to do (or want to do - why would you do anything if you don't have to?).

2. There is a tremendous difference between good tundra start (many tundra-hills) and Dance of the Aurora or Desert Folklore and any other way to generate faith. Those two more or less guarantee that you will have the first religion - you take a building and snowball - you earn a ton of faith, you get the faith boosting stuff first, you earn even more faith to get even more buildings to get even more faith (and they provide culture and happiness to boot - wide dream). A desert-folklore wide civ can easily aquire 5-6 times as much faith as any other civ. This usually gives you 1, perhaps 2 additional faith-bought great people and that's all - not a huge difference. But if you include other types of boni and ways to use it, you run a serious risk of making the game binary. Faith would need to be completely rebalanced if it is to be important. If you don't want to rebalance faith, I'd just go with variation of bonus votes in World Religion plus possibility to buy GDs with Faith, just because it's how it already works (if we don't have that yet, I havn't checked).
If you want to introduce incentive to make "faith hostile takeovers", vary the ammount of votes with majority religion in a country or religion in capitals (it matters what the diplomats and rulers believe in, not what the majority believes in, unless we're in a democracy).
Edit: We've actually brainstormed an idea with my friends that only unimproved tiles of a certain type (or improved with a shrine) should grant the bonus from Dance of the Aurora or Desert Folklore - none of us however are any good with modding, so we've left the issue unresolved.

3. If you want to introduce a late-game national wonder for ideology votes, the unique factor has to be active - not passive, and you should never mix active-passive gameplays here. "Oh another bonus for trade routes which I have a set ammount of" or "oh another bonus for factories" is not the best way to go - everyone has factories and everyone has trade routes. I like the idea of "how many civs have this ideology" much better, as perhaps the only thing to change. If you really want variation, projects that increase votes may be much better. Or you could add ideology World Wonders similar to Prora or Kremlin that simply add a vote or two.

4. Ideologies hitting harder and sooner is good. It would be even better if unhappiness and negative gold impacted the game harder. It's really hard to lose units if you lack gold, and a revolution sucks big time - the unhappiness penalties don't really matter all that much. This, combined, makes the mechanic weak and easy to ignore for the short periods of time it's used. It doesn't matter if I'm cut-off from trade routes - the further the game goes, the less it matters actually. Low-science? Well, pity - I still have a ton of units and they won't start disbanding for 50 or 60 turns even with -90 gpt - and I won't have negative gpt for even 1/3rd of that time even in the worst scenario. It also doesn't make any sense to gold-lock the AI - AI units don't seem to disband even if a CPU is at -200 gpt for 100 turns.
I miss war weariness unhappiness from former civ games...

5. Still, think about the AI - it's already bad and we know it. It can't fight, it doesn't really plan far ahead - some of the changes you think about can break this fragile fiction of AI being able to do it's job ;-)

6. It'd be much better if you introduced a way to decrease the number of availible votes (right now killing people is the only rational way to do it) - this way instead of hoarding votes for yourself, you could also undermine the votes of your opponents, such as:
- this one does not follow the majority religion - and because of that, noone listens to him - blam, -1 vote if it is followed by 1/3rd of the countries, -2 votes if it is followed by half of the countries, -3 if by 2/3rds, -4 if he is the only one not following it - this matches how it worked in history - those not following the majority were left out - those following it were not boosted - they were treated normally;
- this one does not follow the majority ideology - as above - blam, same as above;
- that one is dominated in culture by another civ - he votes as the master-civ pleases a few times, because his people honestly think that that's the way to go - they are cultucally dominated, what else should they think? Then, noone is taking him seriously - minus votes (this one would have to be balanced by improving relevance of CS and other vote-sources, otherwise cultural victory will never be possible before diplomatic victory ).

If these "negative" ways would be connected with something else than WC, it would introduce another layer of gameplay - instead of gathering all the votes, I can simply combat my enemies on the field to decrease their pool of votes, making the world leader vote easier for me to dominate. This would still require tweaking science victory, as it's the only type of victory that does not have a counter. I think it might be fair to simply introduce a way to completely stop science victory from happening in a game - such as "this victory is only possible after the international space station is completed - otherwise, you can't do it" (how you can actually dominate the world by sending a spaceships still baffles me - but we've talked about this already). Mixing victories, making them cross-dependant is one (and by far the most simple) way of ensuring that the game is balanced and that fun changes, enriching gameplay can actually be implemented - if everyone has a goal of spreading tourism and defending with culture and everyone needs to focus on diplomacy to some degree, then the one that does this best wins. Now you can focus on a single thing from turn 0 to the end and win no matter what (and if you focus only on one single thing that everyone has to focus on either way - science - you already get to win) - world domination doesn't exactly work that way. Complicating gameplay is not a great idea until this is remedied. It always baffled me that civ has various "victory conditions" - what I think, and what your ideas logically imply, is creating a single "victory condition" with various paths that lead to it. Perhaps this is somewhat outside the scope of the mod, but think about it - your awesome ideas are right now constricted by other victory paths - if you make diplomatic victory even a tad too complicated, dependant on one too many things, you eliminate your own changes from influencing the game, because following easier, more dependable paths will be the best way to go.
If you increase importance of faith, you run the risk of eliminating civs without religion from this type of victory - and when they are also eliminated from cultural win by virtue of there being only a few really good tourism wonders (Uffizi, Louvre, Globe Theatre and perhaps Broadway), the only thing they are left with is either science or warfare. And since warfare is hard and science is easy, well - the choice is clear. So why not go science all the way? Dip into diplomacy only as much as you need to do to prevent WC from banning space reasearch and you still have the easiest, most dependable victory condition before you - you don't need religion (just some faith you will have either way), two most common ideologies aid you, you need social policies that everyone gets anyway, you just have to go tall and wait.

 

[Gazebo]

As always, you guys have given me much to think about. The general counterpoint I see, from both of you, is related to the competency of the AI. I think an independent diplo victory will actually be easier on the AI, as the AI isn't terribly good at buying votes (it can, but not always intelligently). I'll have to write some AI bits here and there, but it isn't all that difficult. I do think, on the flip side, there will need to be means of reversing a diplomatic snowball. We do have diplo units to take away city-states, but (as a criticism of CSD) that's only one vote per city-state. Other than that, there is no way (currently) of removing votes, but, on the flip-side, there's no easy way of removing cultural influence, science per turn or military conquest (the latter being the easiest, relatively).

I'm with you, thanerion, in feeling a bit flustered about the nature of victory conditions in civ 5. At the end of the day, I have to remind myself that it is a game, and that such 'gamey' endings are necessary for solid replay. Sure, it feels odd, but it works. I think we need to find ways to make the current victories more compelling, challenging and/or competitive. As it stands, science and diplo can be won through the attrition of time – culture and military victories are, in my opinion, the strongest (in terms of competitiveness). Changing the science victory is outside of the scope of CSD, but I've offered my ideas on changes before (I'll try to find and dredge out). One change I'd consider adding to the late game, perhaps, with the discovery of the first spaceship part, is random global warming/irradiation/desolation occurring on the map. It'd be fun to see, and would give context to the desire for humans to build a colony ship to 'get off this stinkin rock.'

In any case, back to diplo. I agree that religion is relatively tame – I wouldn't make founding a religion a mandatory diplo victory achievement, but simply an added incentive. I do think that CEP makes religion much more useful, though I must make CSD with the Vanilla crowd in mind. Making the late-game ideology-specific national wonders 'active' bonuses is, I agree, key. That'll take some time to consider.

To conclude, I just can't shake the feeling, when looking at Civ V, its mechanics, and its victories, that something is missing. I cannot figure out what it is. My mind keeps wrapping back around to the idea of 'dominance,' the idea of soft-power, but I have no idea how to model that as a game mechanic. My history-brain wants the game to mirror, well, history, but my gaming-brain knows that Civ isn't about recreating history per se.

If I could pin my frustrations to any one thing, it would be this: in Civ V (as well as previous civs), what you do in your first 200 turns is more important than what you do in your last 200 turns. The first half of the game is always exciting – religions to found, continents to explore, empires to build; by the Renaissance, most of that is over. And what is left of the game? If you take the 4X game model of 'eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate' , 2/4 are largely eliminated by turn 200-250 (eXplore and eXpand), and eXploit is a slow-burn. So, what, eXterminate is all that is left? Pretty much (which is why Civ games are war-games first, and building-simulators second). This feels backwards. What I do in the late-game, with industry, nukes and rockets, should matter the same, if not more, as what I did with sticks, rocks and slingshots.

What this boils down to is that it is nearly impossible to come back from behind post turn-250 without resorting to conquest. Civ is a foot-race, not tug of war – it is not a zero-sum game, but rather a capitalist fantasyland in which all players are building towards an infinite goal, with infinite resources to borrow on. That is Civ's problem, and it always has been (Civ IV-I all had the same issue). I'm in no position to offer an easy solution, and it falls outside of CSD's scope (except for how it impacts the diplo victory). It has to do with the fact that all resources (particularly science and culture) are pooled and based on static per-turn rates from the beginning of time until the present. When you base a game on per-turn rates, small differences between small numbers early on matter more than small differences between big numbers later, especially once multiplied by 100-200 or 400. Things to consider...

I'll ramble all day on this if you don't stop me, by the way.
G

 

[funksterj]

...

If I could pin my frustrations to any one thing, it would be this: in Civ V (as well as previous civs), what you do in your first 200 turns is more important than what you do in your last 200 turns. The first half of the game is always exciting – religions to found, continents to explore, empires to build; by the Renaissance, most of that is over. And what is left of the game? If you take the 4X game model of 'eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate' , 2/4 are largely eliminated by turn 200-250 (eXplore and eXpand), and eXploit is a slow-burn. So, what, eXterminate is all that is left? Pretty much (which is why Civ games are war-games first, and building-simulators second). This feels backwards. What I do in the late-game, with industry, nukes and rockets, should matter the same, if not more, as what I did with sticks, rocks and slingshots.

...

Nail on head. Though AI is a serious issue, this overall mechanic/game methodology/whatever is as big an issue. I was just thinking on these lines only the other day. It is very hard, though I've seen it done to a small extent, for a Civs and the game in general to dynamically digress in any significant way and still be competitive and an interesting affair once you're past the middle stages game. In the real world, revolutions, upheavals, royal marriages that went sour, a poor crop or two etc. etc. created and still create all sorts of heaves and thrusts in the geopolitical scene. In Civ games (all of them to some degree) it all can become rather static and linear with options closing down rather than opening up.

Anyway, as you say much of that is beyond your project G, but I do agree that's for sure.

On to your thinking on the CSD project, a thought I've had is playing with the notion that there should be a greater cost for powerful nations having broad and strong relationships with CS (and even with less powerful Civs). For mine, once you get a roll on, it can become a bit too easy to maintain strong and secure relationships with CS. In the real world, for example, countries like the US and China, particularly regionally, have massive influence and ties to many countries (big and small), but there is a cost to that in that that they're expected to jump in when the going gets tough; i.e. when smaller nation is threatened, when disaster hits etc. At times, it's too easy in Civ 5 to just keep the diplomats flowing occasionally and there be no on going expectation/cost. I'm not sure how it would work, but something like special class of quests being created by CS exclusively for Civs that have a certain fairly high influence points and/or ally status that they must complete or they receive a massive influence penalty. These quests should be fairly onerous. Things which pop into my mind:

- Famine hits; supply x Gold and/or x GPT for x turns (where x is a significant % of the Civ's current Gold/GPT) to cover aid services.
- Civil unrest; supply x units in x period of turns. Or, a twist to this that I'd prefer, have the quest require that the Civ player garrison a certain number of units (perhaps of a certain class?) in the CS' territory for a certain amount of time.
- Modernisation needed, CS requests technological expertise from Civ; Civ has to give up a certain number of beakers per turn for x amount of turns.

They are a few that spring to mind.

Like I said, I think they should be fairly onerous and the penalties for not completing or agreeing to them harsh. Given that, they should also not be too regular or it could really throw things out. On that, one simple thing is to make the penalties relative rather than absolute - you don't send those units as garrisons to help secure the CS, you just lost 75% of your influence. So not much influence, no big loss - but if you've built up 800 influence in a battle of diplomacy with another rival Civ - that's 600 influence points of diplomacy work that you're going to have to make up for not answering a, what I've termed, "prime relationship" quest. ... Maybe 50%, I don't know, haven't thought it through , but it should be pretty heavy I reckon to make things really interesting for the more powerful Civs that are able to hold strong influence over CS.


One final thing. Late game (at least on the levels I play which is mostly King & Emperor), there tends to be a lot of Gold around unless you're a really nerfed left behind Civ who was hammered early and never made it back. When it comes to the "World's Fair", "International Games" type resolution, as well as racing to get the benefits - I think winning them should automatically incur a gold cost as well that is 'charged' so to speak in a scaled system similar to the 1-3rd place rewards. In the real world, for example, the Olympics bring lots of benefits for tourism, culture, development etc, but they have rarely turned a profit and usually cost the host nation a bomb. Again, can't be ridiculous or it could send a Civ bankrupt for a while. But lets face it, Civs that win these resolutions are usually not struggling - if they're going to put in the hammers to win, they need to also keep in mind they're going to take a Gold hit too. It need not be massive, but a significant amount even if it's just to satisfy a symbolic representation of the real world.


Without putting much thought into balance and modding limitations etc., that's a couple of thoughts for you to think about, play with, and throw out if you think they're stupid.

Thanks again for the mod, really enjoying it, both the playing and watching it develop.

 

[thanerion]

As always, you guys have given me much to think about. The general counterpoint I see, from both of you, is related to the competency of the AI. I think an independent diplo victory will actually be easier on the AI, as the AI isn't terribly good at buying votes (it can, but not always intelligently). I'll have to write some AI bits here and there, but it isn't all that difficult. I do think, on the flip side, there will need to be means of reversing a diplomatic snowball. We do have diplo units to take away city-states, but (as a criticism of CSD) that's only one vote per city-state. Other than that, there is no way (currently) of removing votes, but, on the flip-side, there's no easy way of removing cultural influence, science per turn or military conquest (the latter being the easiest, relatively).

There is a way of removing cultural influence and that is boosting your own culture to escape the claws of tourism - while it's not simple (it shouldn't be), you can still make +culture wonders, pop writers and do all that fun stuff to escape. It works in a funny way, because the best source of culture (to counteract tourism) is actually religion - especially faith buildings when going wide, so you build defense ages before serious offense even exists. After that well - it's mostly cultural guilds (again: worth to make before you start seeing archeological sites, because X * modifiers culture times 200 turns is better than X+4 * modifiers culture times 100 turns unless the X is crappy (but it isn't - you can easily "sacrifice" a city near fresh water to have all 3 cultural guilds in it and later boost it with cultural nationals etc.).

As for removing science - you can bankrupt someone (mostly through conquest though - as we don't have civ4 privateers to pillage trade routes without going to war - bringing them back would add a whole new layer of gameplay). The only other option is embargo, but that doesn't really work like intended because trade with CS is still possible. You can't ban the most important stuff - research agreements (though allowing for a WC resolution to make them like 200-300% more expensive would help a lot, and it could also decrease GS spawn rate). Still, just increasing tech costs by like 20-30% through the whole list or perhaps lowering the input of population into science (should be easy to mod I think), adding a WC resolution to improve science by 20-30% throughout or perhaps adding a modifier based on cultural influence in how much a research agreement gives to each party and putting it as an option would help to broaden the horizon of what CSD can do without suicide.
Science by itself is not the issue - well, unless you've got a 4+ food god tiles cities near mountains etc. What really breaks the game are research agreements, that mostly benefit the player who has rationalism policies and the allmighty Porcelain Tower. If research agreements would scale with cultural domination, simply lowering the population input in beaker calculation and making techs even a tad more expensive would help a lot. That algorithm is just too simple to break, overclocking beakers into riddiculous values.

I'm with you, thanerion, in feeling a bit flustered about the nature of victory conditions in civ 5. At the end of the day, I have to remind myself that it is a game, and that such 'gamey' endings are necessary for solid replay. Sure, it feels odd, but it works.

In my opinion, it doesn't. There is a great number of games with only one victory condition, yet huge replay value, just because this condition can be achieved in so many ways it's hard to even name them.

I think we need to find ways to make the current victories more compelling, challenging and/or competitive. As it stands, science and diplo can be won through the attrition of time – culture and military victories are, in my opinion, the strongest (in terms of competitiveness).

That's because there is an innate disparity in science and any other type of victory - in science, you win by doing something everyone else should also be doing - in other victory types, you do something else in addition to what you should be doing anyway. This cannot be repaired without forcing science player to dabble in either culture or diplomacy (or preferably both) to prevent them from banning his victory path alltogether.

Changing the science victory is outside of the scope of CSD, but I've offered my ideas on changes before (I'll try to find and dredge out).

I have been and still am a great believer in the WC resolutions mentioned above and in my last two posts (especially the one that prevents building a spaceship alltogether). Since it's CSD, not CivCulture, I'm only speaking about diplomacy, though I think culture should have it's own way of stopping science victory too (it always baffled me how a dominated country can still prevent intelectual elite from leaving towards the dominating country).

In any case, back to diplo. I agree that religion is relatively tame – I wouldn't make founding a religion a mandatory diplo victory achievement, but simply an added incentive. I do think that CEP makes religion much more useful, though I must make CSD with the Vanilla crowd in mind. Making the late-game ideology-specific national wonders 'active' bonuses is, I agree, key. That'll take some time to consider.

If it'll be taken into account in calculations, it will either be too easy to achieve with religion and still possible without one or it will be only feasible with religion and nigh impossible without it. I can be proven wrong, but the current balance and blandness of religion seems the only logical way to do it - without redoing the whole faith system of course.

To conclude, I just can't shake the feeling, when looking at Civ V, its mechanics, and its victories, that something is missing. I cannot figure out what it is. My mind keeps wrapping back around to the idea of 'dominance,' the idea of soft-power, but I have no idea how to model that as a game mechanic. My history-brain wants the game to mirror, well, history, but my gaming-brain knows that Civ isn't about recreating history per se.

Still, if you feel weird when someone wins, it's the game not working, even as a game. If a civ that was behind simply puts a lot of gold on the table and wins at "diplomacy", it sucks (that's why you've changed it). If a civ simply exists, is not heavily hammered and then builds a single wonder, and then simply wins by launching a spaceship into orbit while you fight for influence, power, votes etc., it just seems stupid. What has this civ done to win through the whole game? Nothing - it did what we did, but it didn't have to do anything else and it won.

If I could pin my frustrations to any one thing, it would be this: in Civ V (as well as previous civs), what you do in your first 200 turns is more important than what you do in your last 200 turns. The first half of the game is always exciting – religions to found, continents to explore, empires to build; by the Renaissance, most of that is over. And what is left of the game? If you take the 4X game model of 'eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate' , 2/4 are largely eliminated by turn 200-250 (eXplore and eXpand), and eXploit is a slow-burn. So, what, eXterminate is all that is left? Pretty much (which is why Civ games are war-games first, and building-simulators second). This feels backwards. What I do in the late-game, with industry, nukes and rockets, should matter the same, if not more, as what I did with sticks, rocks and slingshots.

That is true because there simply is an overabundance of bonuses and no way to stack penalties against someone without simply invading him, killing his dudes and burning (or taking) his bases. If there was a way to stack penalties for other civilisations without conquest, we'd have a much richer, more active gameplay (and that is perhaps the most important sentence in my post).

Edit: WC resolutions and cultural influence are a great place to add possibilities to stack penalties against someone. Penalising beakers, particular (or all) research agreements, growth, hammers and gold production should be possible. Otherwise, multiplication becomes a serious issue - as you've pointed out. This multiplication (Food + %growth; Production + %production; Science + %science) makes first 200 turns more important than the last 200 turns (on epic, for example). Without ways for someone to combat multiplication (such as forcing -% penalties, fixed penalties, decreasing bonuses, making buildings obsolete when something happens etc.) this quickly gets out of control.

I loved how in Civ4 with revolutions new countries could appear on the map. If we would want something other than 200-300 turns of constant growth and bonus stacking, we would need to introduce not only revolutions, but also random events that cause various issues like cities declaring independence (especially in the case off-shore colonies) without any unhappiness, plagues, diplomatic incidents, issues in royal bloodlines that cause swathes of land to change hands etc. - but we can only pray that these will appear in Civ6, so that we can simply send a country into civil war by assassinating it's leader or causing unrest between poor cities that demand more resources and wealthy cities that don't want to share.

 

[Gazebo]

Hey all,
I'm super busy and still working on a few responses to you guys (so much good discussion!), however I wanted to drop off a little treat, courtesy of Gedemon's hard work.

Multiplayer CSD

Drop this file in your DLC folder (as you would with EUI) and, voila, you can play CSD via multiplayer and with achievements enabled. Yay! This is very, very alpha, so expect -fun!- I would appreciate testing from the wider community, however. Please note that this requires all CiV DLC. To be on the safe side, don't use a map from the map packs (I didn't buy them all). You cannot use any other mods with this in order to play multiplayer. Just make sure you and your other players have all placed this in their respective DLC folders and it should work.

Have fun,
G

 

[Ekmek]

I'm not a fan of the gold or votes Diplo Victory either. But how ambitious are you about changing it?

I always felt that Diplo Victory so be achievement based. You get points for how man resolutions of yours pass in the UN, how many CS quests you complete, how many CS's you become allies with, how many DoFs and Defense Pacts you get, even coups and science steals (intelligence ops can be seen as diplomatic moves too and ties them to the game). You can also add how many people adopt your religion & ideology in as well.

I'd then throw in some of the new stuff I'd like to see like supporting rebels and over turning CS govts (I so wish CS's had ideologies). Maybe a diplo wonder or two.

just my two cents - diplomatic achievements going into some kind of point system is my way to go. I'd be willing to see the leader election thing as a late game way to score a huge chunk of bonus points as a way to make it more competitive if someone has been leading the pack the whole game.

 

[Gazebo]

I'm not a fan of the gold or votes Diplo Victory either. But how ambitious are you about changing it?

Ambitious enough to have worked on this mod for years!

In all seriousness, though, I'm really enjoying the ideas and feedback you all are throwing my way. I see a lot of good things here, though most of all I see that the biggest priority should be new WC resolutions centered around handicapping the other victory conditions. Should be fun – I hope, if I have time, to start chipping away at some of this pretty soon. First on the block: spaceships.

From there, I'll move into finding ways to make votes more meaningful, and to make the diplomatic victory more independent. Small steps, so as to prevent a deluge of changes for poor whoward to integrate into the combined dll.

I'll post regularly with updates as things move forward, and I'll continue to ruminate on the ideas that have been posted here. Also, I am surprised that no one is excited about multiplayer CSD. Poor Gedemon did all this work, we should shower him with praise!
G

 

[whoward69]

First on the block: spaceships.

"Oversight committee delays project due to cost overruns"

 

[thanerion]

I play on hotseat most of the time so I may not be so excited but multiplayer csd feels awesome anyway. Looking forward to any changes as always - though I certainly hope I've encouraged some thinking on the broader subject - the only thing I can do ;-)

 

[Gedemon]

Also, I am surprised that no one is excited about multiplayer CSD. Poor Gedemon did all this work, we should shower him with praise!
G

Well, maybe 2Kgames actually did a real market research before deciding that Mods were not needed in MP

Spoiler :

thanks

 

[Gazebo]

v22 beta attached below. Here are the changes:

1.) Grand Temple now grants WC votes based on Faith output. This amount varies as your faith output varies. The breakdown is as follows:

0-50 Faith per turn = 1 vote
51-100 = 2 votes
101-200 = 3 votes
201-300 = 4 votes
301-up = 5 votes

2.) New Project: Treasure Fleet - Renaissance Era, focuses on naval power. Grants wonder Grand Admiralty for Gold, an Admiral for Silver and a Frigate for Bronze.
2a.) New wonder: Grand Admiralty- grants a powerful new promotion, 'Treasure Fleet.' +1 movement, +10% attack and heal in non-friendly territory. Conquest civs will focus on this (they were the only ones to lack a project).

3.) World's Fair unlocks at Industrialization, and 'World Ideology' happiness penalty versus other ideologies is much stronger. This should force defections/rebellions even in high-level play.

4.) New Resolution: Aerospace Advisory Council. The Aerospace Advisory Council (AAC) is designed to control the proliferation of modern ballistic technology and to oversee national space programs. As long as this resolution is active, all players will suffer a global -33% production penalty for Spaceship Parts due to AAC regulations. Harsh! Unlocks at Rocketry.

5.) Small tweaks to existing voting logic for CSD resolutions (particularly Open Borders)

That's all for now! v22 is very stable, so this may go live once balancing is complete. Let me know what you think!
G

 

[thanerion]

v22 beta attached below. Here are the changes:

1.) Grand Temple now grants WC votes based on Faith output. This amount varies as your faith output varies. The breakdown is as follows:

My input:
- works for every religion until global religion is enforced,
- when global religion is enforced, works only for that religion.
This change greatly aids tall diplomatic civs. 10 or so extra votes on a huge map can be a serious issue in winning if you can't do anything aside from taking the city with Grand Temple. Less votes on smaller maps, but it's still a lot.

2.) New Project: Treasure Fleet - Renaissance Era, focuses on naval power. Grants wonder Grand Admiralty for Gold, an Admiral for Silver and a Frigate for Bronze.

Adding a trade route seems like a cool way to make it a little bit more interesting. Where will this wonder appear?

4.) New Resolution: Aerospace Advisory Council. The Aerospace Advisory Council (AAC) is designed to control the proliferation of modern ballistic technology and to oversee national space programs. As long as this resolution is active, all players will suffer a global -33% production penalty for Spaceship Parts due to AAC regulations. Harsh! Unlocks at Rocketry.

If not for the fact that SS parts are already produced almost exclusively via faith-bought GE pops or gold. Now gold becomes a much better option (it was hard to pop all SS parts with GEs). In my games (hotseat, so hard competition), a space victory (or should I say winning a game) looks like this:
- Science civs work on all pre-information techs, switching them when there is a single turn left, until another civ reaches information or half of civs reach atomic,
- Science civ finishes Satelites, starts Hubble, rushes it with GE (or faith-bought GE),
- United Nations are formed, not much time left to act,
- Science civ pops all GS that it has going through most of information era techs to get SS parts - usually the last tech is left on the route, but sometimes it can be bubbled through if the civ had a good start (4 first cities near fresh water and mountains),
- Faith is spent for either GSs or GEs to push techs/parts as required by Order (yea Order is kinda weak),
- Faith is spent for GSs and parts are bought by Freedom (Freedom rocks - you can almost instantly buy any part with minimal effort - just don't spend gold for some time),
- 7-15 turns later a spaceship flies high (on epic).
At most it took 32 turns for a space civ to launch to orbit since reaching information era. That was in case of an order civ with crappy faith generation that had to produce 2 or even 3 parts. Only once we had a game in which the diplomatic civ had enough votes to win (but the vote never happened). Culture was never even close to victory - popping player cultural runaways is hard as it is without Internet bonus (and that is with a gentlemans agreement to give each other open boarders and not kill musicians owned by another player).