City state liberation - rant/discussion

[Jednooki_John]

Hi guys,

Not sure if it is worthy of a separate threat, but let's try. Been playing Vox for few years now and there is always this one thing that pisses me off every time. Last game, on april 17th patch (deity, Mongolia), just brought my piss to boil in that regard.

Vancouver is a city state that got invaded and occupied by England. I start a war with England which spans for damn two eras almost. One of the greatest struggles was around said Vancouver - I liberate it multiple times, then she takes it back, city is a burning pile of ash with 1 population, it goes back and forth, as the war with England is fierce.

Then I break her back finally, Vancouver is liberated, I am their ally, I got great peace treaty on great conditions. And then what happens few turns later?

England does a coup in Vancouver and the same city that she occupied for ages and consequently turned into pile of ash, is now her dearest ally and in pretty dislike of me, its liberator who fought for two whole eras to liberate it!

Am I the only one who doesn't see any sense to it? It never felt right to me. 9 out of 10 times there is a conquered city state, i don't really see a reason or motivation to liberate it because of it. And if it is not the coup, then some production powerhouse civ will send over 10 envoys in 10 turns and get the city state on his own side and all my efforts were ultimately again in vain.

What if there could be some temporary changes to city states mechanics once you liberate them, that would somehow be advantageous to the civ that was a liberator? What if we could get their unchanged ally status for a while as a guarantee (no other civ can ally)? Happy to brainstorm some ideas that would make liberating city states more rewarding and sensful.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Tekamthi]

i think it could be argued that the RL equivalents happen too... all kinds of slimy conduct and betrayals documented throughout history... strikes me that your example is what might have happened had the falklands "war" in the 80s remained only a political dispute.. some similarities to the recent crimea situation too

I start a war with England which spans for damn two eras almost. One of the greatest struggles was around said Vancouver - I liberate it multiple times, then she takes it back, city is a burning pile of ash with 1 population, it goes back and forth, as the war with England is fierce.

trying to imagine my way through the rl equivalent of this scenario, if i were (still) a Vancouverite, I'd maybe be unhappy with both civs to some degree for bringing violence to my city, but given that I was part of england for two eras as you describe (and coincidentally reality), i'd probably blame england's attacker for turning my city to ash, and side with england given the chance. In fact, if rl mongolia attacked vancouver for several centuries to 'liberate' her from the UK governance system that has been installed there for a while now, I'd expect vancouver would take it pretty badly.. just a hunch.

maybe these should be the exception to the norm though? does seem to be a frequent occurrence -- while I maybe don't have such a problem with the OP scenario occurring, i do find playing a city-state focused game to be rather arbitrarily unpredictable in VP.. i love the addition to city state diplomacy overall but it is somewhat 1-dimensional, wish the diplomat units had one or two other uses to create more of a player choice, or maybe a 2nd diplo unit type akin to the inquisitioner to help defend from coups etc.

try enginseer's world congress reformed mod, iirc it allows you to mitigate this problem by offering choice to create sphere of influence when a city state is conquered/liberated, albeit alongside several other changes: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/world-congress-reformation.557864/

 

[Jednooki_John]

Thanks for your suggestion of a mod, I will check it out! Is it VP compatible by any chance?

Coming back to your analogy - I'd compare it to Poland during let say partitions. Your homeland has been split up for centuries between 3 different empires. Now someone gave you back your independence finally after all that time - now do you really think some silver-tongues diplomate of russia or prussia would convince newly reborn nation of Poland to ally with them back again? I cannot imagine it tbh.

But even if, lets put "real world analogies" aside; I simply believe current setup doesn't really make much sense "mechanically", meaning that there seems to be little to no motivation to actually liberate conquered city-states, especially on deity, when they can be yanked back under someone else's influence in a few turns. I like the idea of getting automatically sphere of influence after liberation - that would at least give you some time as a city-state as an ally (until its voted off) and give a sense of reward for your liberation efforts.

 

[Snipergw]

I agree, the Liberation bonus is too weak. It was fine in vanilla, where the amount kept it yours for a fair amount of time, but in VP it will just flip with a coup or a Great Diplomat quite quickly. Liberating a City-State should give you a Sphere of Influence (same thing from the Congress) over it, either permanently or for an extended time based on game-speed. I wouldn't mind if it just "auto-passed" the Sphere resolution in Congress.

 

[Tekamthi]

I agree, the Liberation bonus is too weak. It was fine in vanilla, where the amount kept it yours for a fair amount of time, but in VP it will just flip with a coup or a Great Diplomat quite quickly. Liberating a City-State should give you a Sphere of Influence (same thing from the Congress) over it, either permanently or for an extended time based on game-speed. I wouldn't mind if it just "auto-passed" the Sphere resolution in Congress.

i agree on the poland analogy, though tbh i am making broad subjective generalizations on all these topics... in vancouver it is also true that some small minority would welcome liberation of some form... in some regions of that province maybe even a majority of the population would, though discussing the merits of these positions risks politicizing our theorycrafting here.

it seems like both outcomes should be possible, but that a clear 'liberator' should be rewarded, i agree. i suspect our vp team here will deem this a new feature though, rather than a fix, and thus fodder for mod mods. And yes, the mod i linked is not only vp compatible, but intended for it -- though enginseer's OP in that thread does not explicitly state it as such, you'll notice it sits in the vp mods subforum.

I think it will fix your concern entirely, and depending on your familiarity with civ mods, you might be able to pull out the city state component on its own if you don't like the rest... essentially that part of enginseer's mod makes it so you have choice to conquer, liberate, install sphere of influence, install open doors on each city state flip. it doesn't use the temporary guarantee in the way you outlined in OP, but effectively installing sphere of influence would have same effect, possibly temporary if repealed later in world congress

i wonder though, in your OP game, did you have an experienced spy looking after your interests in vancouver once you liberated it? i have only played not quite 2 games on recent patches, but i have mostly been good with coups with a proactive policy of getting top rank spies into my satellites as soon as possible. in such a contentious scenario i would have had one travelling same turn as it was captured, though i can't say for sure this measure adequately defends

 

[Recursive]

I'll check if the liberation Influence scales by era.

 

[azum4roll]

In my game liberating one CS gave 300 influence and liberating another later gave 600. Not sure how it's calculated.

 

[Tekamthi]

does the amount of influence really matter? if they're coup'd right away after, this just benefits the coup'er in the end, doesn't it?

maybe need to apply the temp post-coup restriction to liberated cities?

 

[DeAnno]

does the amount of influence really matter? if they're coup'd right away after, this just benefits the coup'er in the end, doesn't it?

maybe need to apply the temp post-coup restriction to liberated cities?

If the amount of influence doesn't matter at all to me that feels more like a problem with how coups work than how liberation works, balance wise.

 

[Jednooki_John]

If the amount of influence doesn't matter at all to me that feels more like a problem with how coups work than how liberation works, balance wise.

If its not a coup, it will be army of diplomats/great diplomats which can be pumped out by a top CS-oriented civ like nothing - same result, still no real reason to be a liberator.

 

[DeAnno]

If its not a coup, it will be army of diplomats/great diplomats which can be pumped out by a top CS-oriented civ like nothing - same result, still no real reason to be a liberator.

This is a problem that can be fixed by just increasing the influence scaler for liberation though. The coup problem sort of invalidates having an influence-based reward in the first place.

 

[Casworon]

I would be fine with it auto passing a sphere of influence resolution giving a permanent alliance with the city state. It could still be repealed during the world Congress if a CS oriented civ wanted too get control over it. But would require a bit more effort than simply sending over a load of envoys.

Its still counterable. But gives a real bonus too being the liberator

 

[vyyt]

I would be fine with it auto passing a sphere of influence resolution giving a permanent alliance with the city state. It could still be repealed during the world Congress if a CS oriented civ wanted too get control over it. But would require a bit more effort than simply sending over a load of envoys.

Its still counterable. But gives a real bonus too being the liberator

But what if you liberated the CS in the very early game? You'd have a permanent ally until WC. I'd rather limit its duration to a set number of turns (and it could be repelled by a WC resolution earlier).

 

[Jednooki_John]

But what if you liberated the CS in the very early game? You'd have a permanent ally until WC. I'd rather limit its duration to a set number of turns (and it could be repelled by a WC resolution earlier).

Fair point! So maybe up until WC is established, it is a "sphere of influence" but with a turn-timer, but after WC is established it changes into "proper" sphere of influence - that is, the one that can only be revoked via WC resolution?

That would actually make "sense", meaning that let say in the "dark ages" CS dont really feel "obliged" to honor the alliance indefinitely, but after "more civilized" times arrive (marked by WC appearance) where diplomacy and political approach matter more, they are bound to the alliance.

 

[Legen]

The starting influence for the liberator isn't that big, usually not enough to prevent a great diplomat, or 2-3 diplo units, from flipping it over. Especially if the rival civ went Statecraft.

I don't know what the liberated CS influence is for all the other civs. If it starts at 0, it could be adjusted to start at -60, and possibly have a negative minimum influence as well. That would delay a CS flip to the original conqueror, or to some other nearby diplo competitor.

 

[vyyt]

Fair point! So maybe up until WC is established, it is a "sphere of influence" but with a turn-timer, but after WC is established it changes into "proper" sphere of influence - that is, the one that can only be revoked via WC resolution?

That would actually make "sense", meaning that let say in the "dark ages" CS dont really feel "obliged" to honor the alliance indefinitely, but after "more civilized" times arrive (marked by WC appearance) where diplomacy and political approach matter more, they are bound to the alliance.

Don't you think that keeping the timer throughout the game and just adding the WC resolution on top of it later would be more consistent?

An alternative to this is just increasing the influence for the liberator, setting it to something very negative for the ex-occupant and to 0 for everyone else.

But I quite like the idea of a sphere of influence for a certain period for the liberator.

 

[InkAxis]

The way that it is implemented in enginseer's World Congress Reformation is that when you liberate a city state you get an event choice that allows you to:

a) Force a sphere of influence on the CS, with diplomatic penalties and rebel units appearing (same as barbarian hoard CS quest)

b) Force an Open Door policy on the CS, with slight diplomatic penalties.

c)just liberate it.

I think I like the way he did it as it also allows an Open Door to be set, and also some interesting consequences of forcing these policies on CS. It is a bit awkward as you have to select "liberate" and then an event choice pops up, but I think if this is actually implemented into VP then the UI could be made better. If the open door or sphere of influence choices are made before the world Congress then they do nothing. I think that's fine because spies don't exist before the world Congress and Great diplomats will be rarer. So just giving a large amount of influence before the world Congress starts will probably be enough.

Edit: one thing that I would like to add is that the CS should keep your influence before it was captured. Because there have been times were I had a really high influence CS and then it got captured and when I liberated it I'm pretty sure it had less influence.

 

[Stalker0]

If another mod does the job than seems like case closed to me. Add in the other mod if you wish and enjoy the experience

 

[InkAxis]

Yeah, I'm trying to take the mod and only use the parts that change city-state liberation as the WCR mod adds a lot of other stuff. I'm having a bit of trouble though. I found three files that seem to deal with the CS liberation: SphereOfInfluences.lua, WorldCongress.sql, and UniqueEvents.xml. I put them into Modbuddy, did OnModActivated -> UpdateDatabase for the xml and sql, and the InGameUIAddin for the lua. I've checked the logs but I can't seem to get it to work. Am I doing something wrong?

Edit: Nevermind, I got it to work. I'll post a reply with the mod in a bit if anyone wants it

 

[InkAxis]

Ok, this mod seems to be working. It's just enginseer's World Congress Reformation but only the CS liberation mechanics.