City States and Election Rigging

[Sorbicol]

I've just played a game as Eygpt going for a cultural victory on Prince. For reasons only known to itself the game spawned just 1 cultural CS in the game, and that at the far end of the continent I was on. Naturally, going for a cultural VC as soon as I found them I befriended and allied with them, and kept it that way until the espionage mechanic fired up.

At this point I'm way ahead in points and culture to everyone else. We've been allied for nearly 1000 years, and suddenly I'm getting lots of "xxx civilsation has failed a coup attempt in Milan" type messages. "OK" I think, " Seeing as I'm the cultural powerhouse in the world, and we've been allied for ages, must be counting in my favour".

Turns out maybe not. Next turn the puny French, who have 2 cities left and are getting pummled by Hiawatha, succeed in rigging the election and I lose all my influence. All of it. Annoyed, I promptly spend 1250 gold "buying" the city back, only to lose it again 8 turns later to the barely more impressive Russians.....

This went on for the next 40 turns or so before the Dutch tool the proactive route of annexing the city. Nothing I tried stopped the loss of influence, be it rebuying the city, stationing my own spy there or trying to rig the elections in my favour. It was supremely annoying and very unbalanced in my view, with the loss of all influence. The city was following my religion too.

Any tips on preventing this in future? Or is it just a case of grin and bare it, hope it'll get fixed in a patch?

 

[Peacemongerer]

The way to prevent it is to rob the AI of its gold... have it buy your extra luxuries at 240 a pop and then they can't spam money on your CSes as much. Also, make sure to focus on 2 or 3 CSes and put your influence so ridiculously high (200+) that coup attempts are of minimal success rate.

Rigging elections is a total waste of time, imo... it only helps when you're like 4 influence behind somebody and don't wanna spend 250 gold.

 

[BobDole]

I'm guessing you mean you lost the influence due to a coup, not an election rigging. Election rigging only changes influence values a moderate amount (~10-20 influence). Coups, on the other hand.....yeah, they're the most frustrating thing in the game right now, and I bet they get changed in a patch. Apparently having a spy in a city-state lowers the chance of the coup succeeding (although it's not shown, or maybe it's just not working, I don't know which) but you'll probably still have your city-state stolen sooner or later. It's incredibly annoying, but all you can do about it right now is just deal with it.

 

[Draknith]

You need to send in your spies to foil the AI's attempts at rigging the elections. Sometimes their spies are just better. However, by stationing one in that city you give yourself the probability that you will stop them from destroying your hard earned influence, or actually turn the city even more into your hands.

 

[Sherlock]

I sent my spies into city-states I need to provide fair elections. And when I say fair, I mean I win.

 

[Sorbicol]

I'm guessing you mean you lost the influence due to a coup, not an election rigging. Election rigging only changes influence values a moderate amount (~10-20 influence). Coups, on the other hand.....yeah, they're the most frustrating thing in the game right now, and I bet they get changed in a patch. Apparently having a spy in a city-state lowers the chance of the coup succeeding (although it's not shown, or maybe it's just not working, I don't know which) but you'll probably still have your city-state stolen sooner or later. It's incredibly annoying, but all you can do about it right now is just deal with it.

Yeah losing all your influence due to a coup. When it's above 100 that kinda stings a little! So is there a difference then between organising a coup and just rigging an election? I figured rigging the election just lead to a coup, not just a mild increase in influence.

Having my spy stationed in the city didn't seem to make that much difference (lost the city more than once while I had spy there), and all my attempts at election rigging/coups failed, so kinda hard to work out what effect it was having.

I like the idea but not the way it's implemented. If I were losing the CS to a strong competitor fine, but why would they defect to a puny civ with only 2 cities left and on the bottom of the leaderboard?

 

[bcaiko]

I think most players right now are saying the coup mechanic needs to be changed. Perhaps successive coups shouldn't be allowed for a set period of time or your spies should be able to be set to track and kill any opposing spies in a city state.

 

[Necrotaur]

I had a dinky little CS neighbor get coup'ed out from under me by the Egyptians, who were on another continent. I was pretty surprised, as the CS and I had been allied for ages. So, I sent my own spy into the CS, rigged elections for a while, and eventually coup'ed it back. Now, I pretty much have to station one of my spies there permanently as every few turns the Egyptians try another coup. I know my guys die on failure, but I don't think theirs do, and it's pretty ridiculous.

There needs to be an option for your spy to hunt other spies instead of their normal duties.

 

[nefloyd]

Coups have a 0% chance to succeed if you keep your CS bribed far enough past the minimum amount you need to replace someone as the ally

 

[dexters]

Coups have a 0% chance to succeed if you keep your CS bribed far enough past the minimum amount you need to replace someone as the ally

I've had intense coups tug of wars over CS. 200 influence or 200+ won't deter all AI. Come AI will dump thousands of gold to get into striking distance and coup your 200= influence CS

The catastrophic thing is if you fail an 85% counter-coup you're put in the doghouse from pure RNG.

Also, I find that Spy rank seem to influence election rigging attemps. 2 spies for competing civs will cancel each other out (ie: no one will succeed in rigging an election)

It's one way to nullify your opponent's spy, but it ties yours up and you gotta be stealing techs with them to get them promoted.

I feel IMHO spies need alternative ways to earn promotions or rather, they need more promotions than simply rank. Perhaps having a recruit sit in a CS for ages rigging elections will earn it 'Rig Elections' promotions that makes it very good at it and may even grant a bonus against coups, so another civ can't just come in and muscle in to your CS with brute force.

 

[Atlanteax]

Coups have a 0% chance to succeed if you keep your CS bribed far enough past the minimum amount you need to replace someone as the ally

Which is... ?

 

[Drawmeus]

Coups are flat out broken. There is no counterplay. Accepting that the AI is always going to be what it is until/unless they release the C++ and some modders get to it, this is the worst flaw in the game right now, bar none. The bare bones minimum should be:

- Your own spy should be able to stop them or DRASTICALLY reduce their chance of success.
- They should count as an aggressive action; you should be able to declare war on the Civ sponsoring the coup and have it count against them for the warmongering mark.

If they want to put some effort into it, coups should be ongoing over a number of turns and you should be able to deal with it after the fact, not just pre-emptively by planting a spy there before it happens. I assume that's far beyond the scope of what could realistically get done at this point, so at minimum they need to put in the ability to diplomatically punish the aggressors.

 

[BobDole]

Coups are flat out broken. There is no counterplay. Accepting that the AI is always going to be what it is until/unless they release the C++ and some modders get to it, this is the worst flaw in the game right now, bar none. The bare bones minimum should be:

- Your own spy should be able to stop them or DRASTICALLY reduce their chance of success.
- They should count as an aggressive action; you should be able to declare war on the Civ sponsoring the coup and have it count against them for the warmongering mark.

If they want to put some effort into it, coups should be ongoing over a number of turns and you should be able to deal with it after the fact, not just pre-emptively by planting a spy there before it happens. I assume that's far beyond the scope of what could realistically get done at this point, so at minimum they need to put in the ability to diplomatically punish the aggressors.

I think someone who did some of the playtesting before release said that spies reduce the chance of an enemy coup, but that it doesn't show up, or is bugged, or something. I could be wrong. Either way, coups should be harder, and there should be something implemented to lower the amount of them (like as you said, take place over a number of turns, or no coups for X turns when a coup JUST occurred). I mean, really, I'm all for gameplay > realism, but with how many coups occur in these city-states, they should realistically all end up in massive civil wars or something, considering you'll sometimes see like 4-5 coups in 10 years in a single city-state.