Civics Improvements Suggestions

[Vokarya]

I've been kicking around a few ideas for other civic choices to fill in what I feel are gaps. Here are two ideas I have had for Military civics. Let me know what you think and I will code them up.

Mercenaries
This represents filling an army with hired troops. It is a very ancient practice and I think it represents a good third alternative to Conscription and Warrior Caste. Instead of using your own people, either forced into service or raised into service, you hire warriors. So the cost of using Conscription is food (all military units are produced with food under Conscription), the cost of using Warrior Caste is decreased yields of all types, and the cost of using Mercenaries is money.

This is my list of what Mercenaries should do.

• Requires Horseback Riding: many mercenaries in the ancient and classical era were hired from "barbarian" tribes. I think this practice is older than Currency and Currency has a very high trick count anyway.
• High upkeep: this may be too much, but I think it is worth a shot. I was originally going to use a direct +1 gold/unit, but we aren't using that any more. If we could, I think instead low or even NO upkeep coupled with the +1 gold cost might be more effective, as long as it costs more than running Conscription or Warrior Caste. This is where it is supposed to hurt.
• +2 XP for new units
• +10% Great General emergence
• -25% war weariness: your people aren't doing most of the fighting.
• +1 local stability per turn
• -1 national stability per turn

Mobilization
This represents mobilizing your entire civilization, or at least most of it, for war. It first comes along at the tail of the Renaissance Era (the French Revolution was one early example of the levée en masse) and continues to be useful throughout the age of mass warfare until you need to join the Modern Era and build nuclear facilities (MAD or Unmanned Warfare). It is kind of a much-grander scale of Conscription.

• Requires Grand War: I want to make this tech more than just a naval tech, which is how it currently acts (Ship of the Line and Trafalgar Square).
• Medium upkeep
• -50% production: production is being routed to the war effort.
• +100% military unit production and production of Garrison, Military Base, Cannon Forge, Arsenal, Factory, Drydock, Naval Yard: you can churn out military units and basic military facilities. The more peripheral buildings (like Combat Simulator) are excluded. The priority is getting out units now.
• Can draft 8 units/turn (twice that of Conscription).
• -20% culture, +20% espionage: great minds are put to work in either research or espionage.
• +15% war weariness: if you're winning, great, but if you're not, the people will be very unhappy.
• +2 national stability per turn: have a goal for the people.

 

[<Nexus>]

Mercenaries:
I vote to bring back the +1 gold/unit for this single civic.
It would be great to hire any unit that is trainable for other civs you are connected to and not at war with. If you lack resources or technologies it doesn't matter, you only need good connections.
It would be the helper of the weaker civs.

Mobilisation:
I don't know. If it is "moder conscription" it would be better to make conscription better at Grand War if possible.

 

[dbkblk]

Sounds good to me! Mercenaries should be a good alternative in middle eras. Sometimes I don't change military civics for stability reasons (Slavery already on.).

 

[Randomness]

IIRC the +1 military cost isn't used because it works really weirdly. I can't remember exactly what was wrong, but it didn't interact well with other modifiers or something... If it can be changed to work properly though, I think this is a great idea.

 

[Noyyau]

Would the AI understand when to use Mobilization, and when NOT to?
-50% is a big malus, but the AI, seeing a +100% as well, would probably consider this a fantastic civic, even if not at war.

 

[nionios]

I suggest very high (if possible) upkeep for mercenaries.How will be reflected the fact that mercenaries fight only for money so they have no patriotic motivation for fighting?

 

[<Nexus>]

IIRC the +1 military cost isn't used because it works really weirdly. I can't remember exactly what was wrong, but it didn't interact well with other modifiers or something... If it can be changed to work properly though, I think this is a great idea.

One could exploit it with Monarchy (iirc). But if it could be fixed IMO the +1 gold/unit would be better than a High Civic Upkeep.

 

[youmakemefart]

I've been kicking around a few ideas for other civic choices to fill in what I feel are gaps. Here are two ideas I have had for Military civics. Let me know what you think and I will code them up.

Mercenaries
This represents filling an army with hired troops. It is a very ancient practice and I think it represents a good third alternative to Conscription and Warrior Caste. Instead of using your own people, either forced into service or raised into service, you hire warriors. So the cost of using Conscription is food (all military units are produced with food under Conscription), the cost of using Warrior Caste is decreased yields of all types, and the cost of using Mercenaries is money.

This is my list of what Mercenaries should do.

• Requires Horseback Riding: many mercenaries in the ancient and classical era were hired from "barbarian" tribes. I think this practice is older than Currency and Currency has a very high trick count anyway.
• High upkeep: this may be too much, but I think it is worth a shot. I was originally going to use a direct +1 gold/unit, but we aren't using that any more. If we could, I think instead low or even NO upkeep coupled with the +1 gold cost might be more effective, as long as it costs more than running Conscription or Warrior Caste. This is where it is supposed to hurt.
• +2 XP for new units
• +10% Great General emergence
• -25% war weariness: your people aren't doing most of the fighting.
• +1 local stability per turn
• -1 national stability per turn

Mobilization
This represents mobilizing your entire civilization, or at least most of it, for war. It first comes along at the tail of the Renaissance Era (the French Revolution was one early example of the levée en masse) and continues to be useful throughout the age of mass warfare until you need to join the Modern Era and build nuclear facilities (MAD or Unmanned Warfare). It is kind of a much-grander scale of Conscription.

• Requires Grand War: I want to make this tech more than just a naval tech, which is how it currently acts (Ship of the Line and Trafalgar Square).
• Medium upkeep
• -50% production: production is being routed to the war effort.
• +100% military unit production and production of Garrison, Military Base, Cannon Forge, Arsenal, Factory, Drydock, Naval Yard: you can churn out military units and basic military facilities. The more peripheral buildings (like Combat Simulator) are excluded. The priority is getting out units now.
• Can draft 8 units/turn (twice that of Conscription).
• -20% culture, +20% espionage: great minds are put to work in either research or espionage.
• +15% war weariness: if you're winning, great, but if you're not, the people will be very unhappy.
• +2 national stability per turn: have a goal for the people.

1) I find the mercenaries civil a FANTASTIC idea - mainly because it was so important in history.
I would change the technology to trade, raise the XP to +3, increase local instability and decrease national instability. Also, units should start with the "plunder" promotion (is that the name?)

2) I like the idea of the mobilization civ, although I any form of army mobilises in one way or another, so I think the name doesn't really cut it. Also, I think there is not THAT much of a difference of Napoleonic war economy etc. (which ware still largely agrarian and feudal states only just starting to transition to industrial societies) compared with the economies of wars of the early 20th century / the home front concept, which I find are not really represented.

My suggestions: I would rename it to total war economy or home front economy (as this was a really important concept in fascist, democratic and communist countries alike in the 20th century) and is distinctly different from any other type of societal arrangement during wartime.

I would make the following changes to your (excellent) list:

* requires industrialisation (or assembly line)
* -50% instead of only -20%
* -50%
* +2 unhappiness per city (additional to the war weariness)

If it is "moder conscription" it would be better to make conscription better at Grand War if possible.

Maybe move "Volunteer Army" to Grand War?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

-50% culture is way too much. It's totally unbalanced if someone is playing with cultural or mastery victory on

 

[<Nexus>]

Maybe move "Volunteer Army" to Grand War?

No. I meant that maybe we don't need Mobilisation as a new civic, as it's almost the same as Conscription.
Mercenaries is a good idea, but that civic category already has enough choices. To add anything new it has to be really unique.
I vote to give a new civic building to Conscription at Grand War to make that civic useful again.

 

[aggri1]

Regarding the unit cost v. civic upkeep in the proposed "Mercenaries" civic... I like the idea of a high civic cost rather than cost per unit, if that means that small civilizations can build and maintain larger armies.

I'm not clear on the upkeep cost though - is it a fixed amount always, or is it population dependent, or dependent on the number of cities? If it's either of the latter two, this civic will hopefully give little Civ's a fighting chance.

Should the civic perhaps include an ability to buy troops? I'm not sure whether the city hurry production button can be limited to function only for units, but even if not, perhaps this proposed civic should allow it.

I see scope for a new Event, one which happens frequently if you're running Mercenaries: "Sir, there's an army at the door looking for work. Shall we hire them?", with the option to buy them, obviously.

I never liked the +1 gold per unit thing. It was never clear to me how it worked, how much it actually was costing, etc...

Cheers, A.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

@ Mercenaries - The cost per turn should be higher then 1, 2 per unit would see reasonable.

They should cost more then your general population upkeep.

Also the "Army at your door looking for work", should be re-termed

"Sire/Your Majesty/Prime Minister/President etc, We have a Mercenary agent who is offering the services of "Insert forces type here" to serve your forces for "Insert terms of contract" Do you accept/deny.

If Denial, and your at war with X Civ, then X civ should be given the option at 1/2 price.

 

[Vokarya]

I can go up to +3 XP on Mercenaries, and I would like to try +1 gold per unit to start and LOW upkeep (civic upkeep is always a factor of # of cities and distance to Palace or Palace-type building). I think the problem was the conflict between +X gold/unit and +X free units. If this doesn't work, we can go back to High Upkeep.

The palette of effects that I can actually do with a civic is fairly limited. Anything that is not already an XML tag is out of my league, and I do not want to ask for new effects just for one civic, or for just about anything at this point.

For balancing purposes, I don't want to change my tech assignments. Trade is #2 out of 286 technologies for trick count. It does not need anything more. Sometimes absolute historical fidelity has to be told to shut up and sit down. I'm looking for technologies that need help. Everything is at the technical two-trick level, but there are some techs that I feel could use a little bit more differentiation. This is why Menagerie comes available at Slavery tech; all Slavery had was the Slavery civic and its Slave Market building.

There are other mods with systems for hiring mercenaries. Rhye's and Fall has one. I think right now we are best off keeping this simple.

There also already are Mercenaries events. They are the ones that spawn barbarians if you don't pay, do nothing if you pay a small amount, or give you units if you pay more.

 

[Vokarya]

The real inspiration for the Mobilization civic is actually Civilization III, which allows you to mobilize for war once you get Nationalism. (Civ 3 only allows government choices and mobilize for war.) While in mobilized status, you get +1 production per tile, but can only build military units and military city improvements. I do not exactly know what counted, but that's the effect I'm going for. I do want it to be basically super-Conscription, as I think even the second tier of civic choices (Despotism, Slavery, Charity, Prophets) are supposed to be a step up, but I would definitely bolt from them as soon as I get a chance.

 

[Vokarya]

I also have two issues with the Legislative category.

First, the name. I really-really-really wish this name was changed to something that didn't sound straight out of a textbook trying to put a modern political-science analysis on this topic. I think it's the only name we currently have that I flinch when I look at it (yes, I do take names extremely seriously and bad ones make me want to break out the verbal knives). It seems to me that actual law-making is done in the intersection of this category and the Government civic (for example, in Despotism, the upper classes have no authority other than what the leader allows, while Democracy puts power in the hands of the elected officials), and the point of this category really feels to me like who is the "upper class", in the way that vanilla Civ4's Labor category defined the role of the "lower class". I can understand not using Power, simply because that is such an overused word (military power, electric power) but would Rule be acceptable?

Secondly, I think we need to differentiate better between Nobility, Patrician, and Senate. I think these three are very similar, that they all represent hereditary or mostly-hereditary upper classes, and that Patrician fits the Roman Senate better than Senate does. I find Nobility is quite unattractive due to the -15% production and they both get overshadowed by Senate with its actual stability bonus. Maybe Nobility should reflect "warrior elite" and Patrician "luxurious elite" (not taken to extremes, but that's the feel)?

 

[Afforess]

Well I guess that puts me fairly in the textbooks-are-right camp, with the "Legislative" supporters.

I don't want it changed, but won't actively stop it, nor change it back.

 

[Arakhor]

I'm happy to have Nobility and Patricians specialised a bit more, but I'm not sure about changing Legislative. I get very sensitive about words too, so I'll take a look this weekend and give it a think.

 

[youmakemefart]

My suggestions: I would rename it to total war economy or home front economy (as this was a really important concept in fascist, democratic and communist countries alike in the 20th century) and is distinctly different from any other type of societal arrangement during wartime.

I would make the following changes to your (excellent) list:

* requires industrialisation (or assembly line)
* -50% instead of only -20%
* -50%
* +2 unhappiness per city (additional to the war weariness)

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Afforess]

Read up, people responded to it.

 

[youmakemefart]

Read up, people responded to it.

Nope, actually not.
In the worst case I'll have to make my own little addition to the mod, I really like the idea..