Congress 2026 (poll inside)

[hokath]

Hello, hello! A few things to discuss.

1. MAGI election
Since I have been elevated to Congress Host, there is one vacant slot for MAGI. These are 3 people who volunteer their time to help moderate the congress sessions.
If you ever thought something like, "why the hell did they let people vote on THAT?!", then this job might be for you!
Interested? Send me a DM.
In December we will have an election if multiple people show interest. That will be in a separate thread.

2. January Congress
Since 4UC integration has taken the -- expected -- very long time, we've rather fallen out of practice with the congress! Indeed, there are probably many people who have joined the community and have yet to take part!
It is my hope -- and I see no immediate reason why this won't be possible -- to have a congress session in January.
Because of the large overhaul of 4UC, and the time since the last congress, I want to place a bit of a one-off restriction on this session and limit it to "balance". Specifically I won't be allowing any major overhaul proposals to give the devs more time to improve stability and fix bugs as we embark on the 5.0 adventure! So things like the integration of big modmods like Enlightenment Era, revamps to the Promotion system, swapping out all the AI with ChatGPT, and really anything that would require speculative changes to the DLL will not be allowed in the first 5.0 session. Hopefully that feels sensible to everyone. The MAGI and I will have to assess on a proposal-by-proposal basis but I don't think it's beyond the wit of man to achieve this.

3. Future of balance
I really enjoy the VP congress and I'm energized to be organizing it as host. It's a lot of work behind the scenes and separating this role from the senior dev position I think is going to free up a lot of time within the team.
However, I know that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. I wanted to have a poll -- non-binding and purely resource-gathering exercise -- on what the community thinks are the preferred way(s) to govern specifically the balance part of VP.
I've listed some options which I'll briefly explain what I mean by them here

i) VP Congress -- what we currently have
pros: high degree of participation and ideas
cons: high numbers of votes take place, vulnerable to bad actors

ii) Design Dictatorship -- what we used to have. The lead dev (or someone they delegate to) makes all decisions, responding to the community and the whispers of the void
pros: singular and joined-up vision of the game
cons: puts a lot of work on one person who must stay engaged

iii) Big-Change Referenda -- similar to (ii) but including congress-style votes on any changes perceived to pass some threshold as "major" or controversial
pros: makes the dictatorship more conservative with changes
cons: makes the dictatorship more conservative with changes

iv) Balance Council -- like (i) but the people who participate are chosen/elected from the player base to fill some finite number of seats, like a parliament
pros: produces high-quality changes (not the same as popular)
cons: becomes political/personal/dramatic

Please feel free to discuss in the thread, suggest other pros/cons or models!
Again, I intend to carry on with the congress, but I think it's healthy to discuss.

 

[jarcast2]

Long live to chairman azuMao Zeroll.

 

[redrum68]

IMO, only making changes passed by Congress has been taken too far especially since 4UC has made it so long in between sessions. I think the devs or a small group of experienced players need to be able to make small balance adjustments outside of congress to keep the game in a balanced and fun state. Also when so many things are put to a vote which often interact with each other and then only a portion of them are passed, it can leave things in an unbalanced state even if each individual proposal itself was fine. I think making some of the small balance adjustments outside of Congress will help let Congress focus on the more interesting and bigger changes.

A specific example, is I submitted a PR to make some minor adjustments to increase Immortal/Deity AI bonuses to make them more competitive in early wars which I don't think is something that needs to go through Congress as its very minor and only impacts a small portion of the community (Immortal/Deity players). Having the community vote on whether the Deity AI should get a starting supply of 12 vs 15 isn't something most players probably care about and just increases the number of votes.

 

[Stalker0]

A specific example, is I submitted a PR to make some minor adjustments to increase Immortal/Deity AI bonuses to make them more competitive in early wars which I don't think is something that needs to go through Congress as its very minor and only impacts a small portion of the community (Immortal/Deity players).

What if the rest of the immortal player base disagrees? Should it be because you said something, and no one else happened to say anything, that we should just change the mod for all of those players?



Now I am a MAGI, so likely some bias here to note, but I do think the VP congress is doing a great job, and the model works well for a number of reasons:

1) Paces balance changes: When a change happens, we have some time before we change again. It gives time to actually absorb the change, debate it, and decide if the new updates are worth keeping, adjusting again, etc.

2) Provides an actual insight into what the playerbase wants.

In the old days, it was whoever screamed the loudest was heard....I know because I was one of those people that liked to scream The congress is a way for the entire community to tell us what they actually want, as opposed to what a few people "think" everyone wants but once we actually get that feedback collected turns out they didn't have a clue.

3) Provides consistency to the change process.

This is one of the best aspects. In the old days, we would get a balance change once every 4 months.....or 4 patches in a few weeks. It was all based on G's feelings and motivation at the time. With the congress, we have a schedule. People know when to show up to vote, people know when the next changes are on the horizon. It created a consistent, steady stream of improvement compared to the ad hoc nature of the previous system.

4) Provides a seal of approval on changes.

Like look at 4UC, the biggest change to the mod since its inception most likely. Speaking for myself, I had never played 4UC, had no super desire to do so. The idea of overhauling the entire mod to incorporate that, I would have been a HELL NO under the old system. A few people would have yelled on the forum that its the most amazing thing ever, a few people would have screamed its crazy to consider such a thing....and then what? Whichever direction we went with, people could say "you are going against the community's desires"....because we simply wouldn't know.

The congress allowed us to put it out there and get a very sizable positive desire from the community to move forward with that overhaul. That gives us all the confidence to say "this IS what the community wants", we don't have to guess, we don't have to assume. We created a system to give our commmunity the ability to weigh in, and we can use that to stamp a change with confidence. That is so much better than when G just put their finger in the wind, made an assumption, and hoped the communith would like it.



The congress (like any republic or democracy system) has its flaws, but I think it has been a wonderful step forward in creating a proper change process for the mod, and I would certainly not prefer to revert back.

 

[redrum68]

What if the rest of the immortal player base disagrees? Should it be because you said something, and no one else happened to say anything, that we should just change the mod for all of those players?



Now I am a MAGI, so likely some bias here to note, but I do think the VP congress is doing a great job, and the model works well for a number of reasons:

1) Paces balance changes: When a change happens, we have some time before we change again. It gives time to actually absorb the change, debate it, and decide if the new updates are worth keeping, adjusting again, etc.

I'm not saying that my specific change should be accepted but that its the type of change that the devs or a small experienced group of players should consider. Putting that small and specific to high level AI players change to a complete Congress vote is overkill as its minor and impacts only a small percentage of the player base.

IMO, the pacing and the overall cohesion of balance changes is the main problem and downside of the current Congress model. Having no balance changes for over a year now and having no one that can make some minor balance changes after lots of congress proposals are implemented is hurting the balance and fun of the game.

 

[Stalker0]

IMO, the pacing and the overall cohesion of balance changes is the main problem and downside of the current Congress model. Having no balance changes for over a year now and having no one that can make some minor balance changes after lots of congress proposals are implemented is hurting the balance and fun of the game.

The reason we have not had balance changes is not due to the congress....its due to the MASSIVE overhaul the dev team performed. The idea of doing that AND balance changes right in the middel of implementation was a recipe for disaster.

Now that the overhaul is nearing completion (note that its still not done, its still in alpha phase), congress is looking to start back up, and we can start to roll out that consistent stream of changes again.

 

[Karlos_BR]

I have no strong opinions on how the Congress should be handle, I'm just happy to know that Enlightenment Era is being considered for integration in the future.

 

[redrum68]

The reason we have not had balance changes is not due to the congress....its due to the MASSIVE overhaul the dev team performed. The idea of doing that AND balance changes right in the middel of implementation was a recipe for disaster.

Now that the overhaul is nearing completion (note that its still not done, its still in alpha phase), congress is looking to start back up, and we can start to roll out that consistent stream of changes again.

The massive overhaul was voted on by congress though... and there were plenty of other minor changes done to UI, AI, bugs, etc even while that was being implemented so some minor balance changes like what I mentioned could have been done as well. Either way though I'm talking about being willing to make some minor changes outside of congress so that it doesn't take so long and the devs can ensure a cohesive, balanced, and fun game.

 

[usadefcon1]

To be honest if I had known 4UC would take a year to complete I wouldn't have voted for it. I originally thought we would just take the mod I've been using for years and make it default on, then have community balance that.

Anyway now that we're here I'm glad it's all integrated and I'm looking forward to a new congress. Thank you again to the devs who work so hard on this!