Civilisation Attributes open discussion

[1SDANi]

The issue is not my incapability to implement a new XML tag.

I didn't mean to imply it was. I'm really sorry, I should have thought through my phrasing of that comment more before posting.

 

[Dracosolon]

For Mexico:
Maybe something like this:

Revisiting ideas mentioned in old threads, just fun thought experiments:

French UP - Power of Revolutions:
-Temporary additional drafting available after adopting new* Civics.
-*As in, never adopted before and not available at the beginning of the game.
-Cumulative with regular drafting (like from Nationhood).
-Maybe lessened anarchy (as in shorter and with less impact on stability)?

I'd seen discussions of something similar before but centered on the specific French Revolution, but that's a bit too unique for a UP. I think it can easily be extended to the numerous political troubles that characterized French history before and after.

French UHV2 - [insert name here]:
-Control or vassalize 40% of Europe and North America in 1810 AD and 40% of Africa, South Asia* and Polynesia in 1935.
-*Including South East Asia.
-Not sure on the name.
-The 40% is an exageration, especially in South Asia where you'll have to get both Indochina and a bigger part of India than the real life French enclaves, and makes it the partially ahistorical goal.
-Not sure on the name, something to do with both eras would be best. Maybe just a pithy Napoleon quote or something.

Mostly just to give the player more opportunities to use the aforementioned UP, and to make the 19th century slightly more interesting, since you just have to beeline for the Eiffel Tower and the Metropolitain otherwise.

National Wonder - Schismatic Shrine:
-Must be built by Great Prophet, requires that you do not control (at construction) your State Religion's Holy City.
-Provides Shrine income from your and your vassals' cities with your State Religion.
-Should probably not stack with regular HC Shrine income if you do acquire it later, you just get HC income then.
-Maybe mild diplomatic malus from other civs with the same religion?

The idea comes from the discussion over Shia Islam and the idea that it's not worth implementing as a full-fledged religion, but the logic is extended to other religions where Civs developped variants of their own - Church of England, maybe Buddhist schools?

Actually that French UP you propose would fit greatly for Mexico.

France's diplomacy bonus fits it overall although it could have a little improvement, and that would only represent the 19th and 20th centuries out of its roughly 1500 years of history, while Mexico's first 100 years or more as an independent country consisted of constant revolts and foreign invasions.

Problem is I don't think Mexico should be too strong militarily. Leoreth mentioned the Porfiriato, which strikes me as a good source of inspiration for a possible more tech or building-oriented UHV. I think something like this could help:

Power of Revolutions: Adopting civics for the first time partially resets the Great People threshold.

 

[SultanRedSnake]

Here I go on Portugal again! While I was lost in some general brainstorming I stumbled on the idea of linking their UP to number of overseas colonies in someway and perhaps having that interact with trade routes as well? While the current UP works, in my hundreds (not lying!) of games I've never come close to hitting the peripheral stability limit so on that basis it's of questionable utility if relevant at all outside of maybe some creative off-meta strats one might concoct. The best UPs provide the skilled player with an ability they can leverage, and I aspire to conceive a worthy one for the plucky lil' kingdom in the coming weeks.

 

[Rafaelito]

Suggestion for the byzantines:

The greek fire event (same as in RFC Sword of Islam):

Once you discover alchemy, an event will trigger asking you to build 7 dromons. If you complete it, a siphanotores hero unit will spawn in your capital with decent stats (city defense oriented), nothing op but a nice addition to help your defenses against the overwhelming barbarian/turkic forces in the years to come.

That would not only be historically accurate but also would make building dromons something desirable and interesting.

 

[Dracosolon]

Yeah Dromons are pretry superfluous on the current map. I guess there could be more naval opponents for them to fight like Barbarian pirates, or maybe they could have some side utility like being able to bombard cities.

 

[AOS9001]

I've found having a good fleet helps Byzantine gameplay a lot, you can move your troops between Anatolia, Italy, Greece, and North Africa (if you still hold it) a lot more quickly. On the big map, this might matter even more. So that's a +1 to the Greek Fire event from SoI from me.

 

[Orbii]

For Byzantium:
-I agree it would be hard to balance it if it's based on stored gold. How about "Extra production in capital from the gold, culture and espionage sliders"? All three fit thematically, it conflicts with research, and it synergizes with the current UHV without being too exploitable.

Of the suggestions for Byzantine UPs up to now, I want to throw in my verbal vote for this one (or the gold = bonuses in capital). The "redirect shrine income" is interesting, but I think it runs into the problem that it doesn't really make sense for most of the game if a player is playing somewhat historically.

The player will lose access to Jerusalem early from the Arab rise and Rome should already be gone either from the start of the spawn or scenario, depending on the start date, and difficult thereafter to retain and hold. Realistically that means not playing with a UP for most of the game (which is a similar problem as the current Bribery UP, in my experience). Also, historically, Byzantium never regained control of either Jerusalem or Rome after the 7th/8th century, so a UP centered around control of those assumes an ahistorical outcome for the vast majority of the civ's gameplay.

I think the slider one achieves the best balance of some level of historicity, overall gameplay utility, and helpfulness to meeting the UHV: you don't really need tech to do the UHV, but you do need culture, gold, production, and food. Maybe also add some amount of percent food to capital as well (adjusting percentages for balance) to really help capture the idea of Constantinople as medieval Europe's largest city?

Lastly, was there any plans to change UHV3? Even if it is scaled up in city amount for the current map, I think it's a very easy UHV that basically translates to "don't die to the Ottomans in 1280 and then spend the next 170 years worth of turns doing whatever." Easy UHVs aren't a huge problem but I think there's room to make this goal and the end of the Byzantine UHV game more interesting. Adding at least a few cities in Italy, and maybe also the Maghreb, to the goal wouldn't make it too much harder. It also would promote a more western facing game near the tail end of the UHV, which would actually necessitate the player engaging with more civilizations that by then should be eclipsing Byzantium just by virtue of their modifiers.

 

[Dracosolon]

That was my objection to the shrine UP too. The one argument I have against the UP I proposed is that with the current UHV it would risk being excessively straightforward: just run the Gold slider until UHV1 is done, then Culture, then do whatever.

As for UHV3, I played Byzantium recently and found it pretty tense... but that's because I hadn't bothered conquering anything back from the Arabs and waited for the Ottomans's birth protection to expire to strike back, so that left me with very few turns to move my massive army. I don't think it's necessarily the best option to expand the conquest goal maximally either, though it's a possibility. One option that Banefire proposed here was "settle a Great General in Rome by 900 AD" which I think makes sense as a more modest and temporary military goal and could be incorporated into the current UHV3.

In general Byzantium has the problem that unless you go ahistorical the last few centuries of its empire do not give you a lot of exciting options for UHV. This is somewhat inevitable for certain civs where once UHV 1 and 2 are done the game become less interesting* (unless you come up with new goals for yourself), which sometimes can't be helped. In the case of Byzantium it makes sense for its UHV experience to be pretty front-loaded followed by a quieter game. I'd like to be proven wrong though.

* I say this even though one of my suggestions with France is that I think its UHV could be overhauled to make the 19th century more interesting rather than just having to build the two remaining wonders, but that's because that century was arguably the most dynamic in its history so it feels odd to rest on your laurels at that point. Again, that's a problem that can be adressed with some self-imposed challenges on the player's part.

 

[Darbin]

So, this has been brought up before (I think), but I wanted to give some input on Englands UHV goals, as well as some other thoughts.

I feel that an underutilized aspect of a lot of European civs is the fact that their goals focus entirely on reaching their apex, with aligning goals, while somewhat neglecting all of the civs facets. England to me is a good example of this, as maintaining a large navy goes hand in hand with rapid colonization of faraway lands, while other parts of it history (particularly pertaining to pre-colonial times) are somewhat neglected.

Personally I think this isn’t incongruent with the philosophy of the mod and it’s not a problem per se. I would like to give some perspective, however, on how I feel UHV:s could offer the most immersive and challenging aspect of the game.

To me, a civ with good UHV:s have them well tailored to their unique powers, while offering historically immersive challenges. One thing I love about certain civs UHV:s is when they pull you in drastically different directions. Not every civ has to have such an erratic game, of course, but I love how the above mentioned Byzantine UHV:s force you in such different directions, making you struggle up until you reach that golden age of the second UHV that can give you a huge swing towards the final UHV.

For England, I think having goals that gear you towards the golden age is great. The tech UHV is in my opinion great, because a GA is fantastic for laying the foundation of good tech with commerce and science buildings coming online.

I do however feel that the naval UHV ought to be combined with the colonial one, somehow (not sure of the specifics). To me, England should have a goal centered either on the Hundred Years War, or artistry. Maybe both!

So my suggestion to pull England towards a different direction in the early game, while not ripping off Frances goal of culture, is to gear England towards a conquest of France. I think somehow this should be temporary however, somehow forcing an English player to eventually relinquish their French possessions in favor of splendid isolationism. I think a cool option here is to have the French AI geared towards great artist generation in Paris. If the English player manages to reach Paris early (predating Henry V:s conquest and instead emulating Edward III:s claims, or even Aquitanian ambitions), an already established GP farm could lend itself well to my proposed goal (open for changes, of course):

Settle 4 great artists in London and control 60% of France by 1500.

Then you could hardcode a flip (or conquerors) to France. High culture in London would be great just as it is for France, because of the later Museum. Londons museums are arguably among the most renowned in the world, and while the building lets France’s culture generation go on steroids, in Englands case the museum could really help you switch gears towards insane Great Scientist generation!

Just some thoughts, sorry for the essay.

 

[Dracosolon]

I think the general philosophy of the mod is to by default ignore pre-modern European wars because:

1) Most of them were too small in scale to be properly represented, and would often revert in some way or another in what in game terms would be a couple of turns (RFC Europe is much better for those),
and
2) If they occurred in a normal game, Europe would be disrupted which would have consequences on colonialism later. Not great for balance and relative historical accuracy if you're playing as, say, India and France did you the courtesy of taking out England in 1066.

UHV can afford to be more freeform though because they're purely initiated by the human player. However for England specifically I'm not sure it's great to give them another conquest goal when they already have a much more iconic one later. I did read suggestions though for some sort of "Splendid Isolation" goal which would be about not conquering Europe, but stopping any continental power from growing too powerful. Maybe something about score, or military power or territory conquered outside of their core. I talked about it here:

Maybe something like "Splendid Isolation: Make sure no civilization control more than X% of Western and Central Europe* and that no European civilization has more than X% of your score in X AD."

* Excluding Russia.

In practice, this would encourage you to expand and research to inflate your score while also sabotaging the others' colonization efforts as much as possible, which could be facilitated by sinking their transports (and thus, indeed, rule the waves). Alternatively it could be phrased as "make sure the other European civilizations have less than X colonies combined in X AD." but that might be a bit less freeform/more frustrating.

Or even just "Make sure each of the other Western and Central European civs controls less than X cities in X AD."

It would be neat though if the phrasing was so that you were discouraged from conquering continental territory yourself though.

 

[Darbin]

I think the general philosophy of the mod is to by default ignore pre-modern European wars because:

1) Most of them were too small in scale to be properly represented, and would often revert in some way or another in what in game terms would be a couple of turns (RFC Europe is much better for those),
and
2) If they occurred in a normal game, Europe would be disrupted which would have consequences on colonialism later. Not great for balance and relative historical accuracy if you're playing as, say, India and France did you the courtesy of taking out England in 1066.

UHV can afford to be more freeform though because they're purely initiated by the human player. However for England specifically I'm not sure it's great to give them another conquest goal when they already have a much more iconic one later. I did read suggestions though for some sort of "Splendid Isolation" goal which would be about not conquering Europe, but stopping any continental power from growing too powerful. Maybe something about score, or military power or territory conquered outside of their core. I talked about it here:



It would be neat though if the phrasing was so that you were discouraged from conquering continental territory yourself though.

I did consider much of what you’re saying when writing my post, and I’d like to give some responses.

Firstly, I think the idea of keeping Europe pacified until the later stages of the game is something that inevitably will have to change with the new map. There’s no point in adding Sweden to have them just sit around until the 30 years war, because while each individual conflict with Denmark could be considered minor, their historic rivalry must come to a head through war.

England and France aren’t poised for war currently – their interests don’t conflict until the colonial era. This would be fine as is, if the aforementioned wars were small in scale, but I disagree with such an assessment. While the HYW would be inconsequential in game as far as territorial changes go, this is only itself a consequence of the game not giving England any reason to care about the continent at all, which in my opinion doesn’t make for an engaging experience playing as England until colonialism kicks in.

With regards to what you say about railroading colonialism itself, I somewhat agree that European conflict could be a hindrance to that. I just don’t see France taking England on with regards to naval capacity as is – if England is serious about naval warfare, conquest of the isles is practically impossible. Even then, if it were to happen, stability could prevent France from conquering further than southern England – a Scottish colonial empire wouldn’t be too shocking, and if it were weaker than a British one then that just makes sense. I see your point though, would need some work.

Finally regarding the question of conquest goals – I concede that two of them might sound like much, but Britains history is undeniably one of conflict and conquest, having been at war with a vast majority of the worlds countries. I don’t feel a UHV with both a GP and a conquest side to it is too far fetched.

Splendid isolationism in game is most easily represented through a tall game, at least in regards to managing your core as such. I agree that England should inevitably fall into this position, but as I said, squeezing in the reason for why Britain got to that point is in my opinion desirable.

I see where you’re coming from with the balance of powers and all that. The problem with such a goal in this game is that it is boring and doesn’t give the player any meaningful rewards along the way. Also, the tech goal already incentivizes sabotage of your rivals – if Britain was made to struggle with overextension because of their colonial possessions, then the player would already be discouraged from conquering Europe and instead resorting to blockading and plundering their rivals as appropriate to wreck their economies.

 

[Glorfindel of Gondolin]

Byzantine UP idea:
50% less XP required for promotion + 50% less XP required for great general emergence

Represents the long military struggle of the empire + emphasizes it's need of recruiting inexperienced troops to defend its borders constantly.

It could help the player to achieve control over the original empire (restore it), which may be needed for a UHV, like capturing Rome and Jerusalem (a UHV suggestion if isn't implemented yet).

Stability could be a big problem for such gameplay however, and thus ideally the Byzantines would like more cities in their core (Greece and Thrace), which seems reasonable considering the new map, which is bigger.

It's an aspect that I waited for a long time, being able to stabilize the Byzantines while holding extra cities.

I think that military focused Byzantines would have better gameplay than a mostly commercial one (though its still needed of course), in light of the crusades, etc.
In my opinion it would be great representation of them.

 

[Glorfindel of Gondolin]

I would also like to emphasize that some parts of Anatolia (like Trebizond and western Anatolia/ Smyrna) should be part of the Byzantine core due to not falling under Turkish rule until very late, together with greece.
Trebizond actually outlived Constantinople, and was the last part of the Byzantine empire + was a very important commercial center.

 

[Glorfindel of Gondolin]

Okay I checked the Byzantine stability maps, and I apologize for my previous comment, as it's completely irrelevant.
Though now I would like to point out that it's weird that Greece and Cyprus aren't in the stability zone.
Isn't it too farfetched to leave them out?
Greece was the Byzantine homeland in fact, not to mention modern Greek history.
Greece is the last Byzantine holdout, even kinda to this day.
The kingdom of the Morea, Peloponnese was pretty much the last province when Constantinople fell, together with Trebizond and a few other stragglers.
I am not trying to be rude or something and respect the way you balance the mod, just wanted to point out that matter.
Sorry for the long comments....
You are doing great Leoreth best civ 4 mod ever

 

[TsimTsigal]

England and France aren’t poised for war currently – their interests don’t conflict until the colonial era.

Ironically i got my England UHV in game where i used army from Vikings picking me their target (which spawns like 4 swords and 4 archers for you not to be overrun) to naval blitz half of France. Eventually gave cities back to them, but was amused how it roughly followed actual Hundred Years war. Europe being weirdly united is a problem of base Civ diplomacy: same religion + some turns at peace + OB = pleased or even friendly relations until Reformation.

Also, i'd like to make a point that British UHV2 (or 3, the naval one) is the most boring and frustrating one in the mod by far. It's not hard, but it forces you to act like a total looney, declaring wars only to get closer to that 50 ships threshold. Your targets for actual wars usually don't have a massive fleet, but, say, Morocco and Japan do, forcing you to start completely nonsensical conflicts. But overall i enjoyed British UHV, easily top10 in my opinion.

 

[BigSchwartzzz]

Also, i'd like to make a point that British UHV2 (or 3, the naval one) is the most boring and frustrating one in the mod by far. It's not hard, but it forces you to act like a total looney, declaring wars only to get closer to that 50 ships threshold. Your targets for actual wars usually don't have a massive fleet, but, say, Morocco and Japan do, forcing you to start completely nonsensical conflicts. But overall i enjoyed British UHV, easily top10 in my opinion.

The fix for that is privateers. I build a bunch of them, put a great general on a few, and send them around in squads and it's fun AF. I don't need to go out of my way to DoW.

 

[Hickman888]

The fix for that is privateers. I build a bunch of them, put a great general on a few, and send them around in squads and it's fun AF. I don't need to go out of my way to DoW.

Exactly! Pirates of the Caribbean!

And for the guy saying that England and France aren’t poised for war in the medieval era… I would argue they actually are. As England, you need to take the tech lead fairly quickly. And with France being your greatest tech competitor, the easiest way to insure that lead is to declare war and occupy Paris, or to vassalize them. Just because there isn’t an explicit conquest goal, doesn’t mean it’s not incentivized.

 

[Logoncal]

I love France's tech capacity. It skyrockets early game and then flatlines, getting overshadowed by Britain and Germany.

After they get Repl. Parts, they can no longer tech as fast as the other civs.

 

[TsimTsigal]

The fix for that is privateers. I build a bunch of them, put a great general on a few, and send them around in squads and it's fun AF. I don't need to go out of my way to DoW.

It is possible to achieve this with privateers (especially on Marathon, much less so on Normal), but honestly it's much more tedious and less reliable than ravaging Japan and Indochina with Galleons/Frigates/Man'o'Wars. Even with Privateers it's still boring grind for sake of grind.